Canterbury Tales and Other Poems, Geoffrey Chaucer [good fiction books to read txt] 📗

but bottomless behest [which he found but groundless promises].” Day by day increased the woe of Troilus; he laid himself in bed, neither eating, nor drinking, nor sleeping, nor speaking, almost distracted by the thought of Cressida’s unkindness. He related his dream to his sister Cassandra, who told him that the boar betokened Diomede, and that, wheresoever his lady was, Diornede certainly had her heart, and she was his: “weep if thou wilt, or leave, for, out of doubt, this Diomede is in, and thou art out.” Troilus, enraged, refused to believe Cassandra’s interpretation; as well, he cried, might such a story be credited of Alcestis, who devoted her life for her husband; and in his wrath he started from bed, “as though all whole had him y-made a leach [physician],” resolving to find out the truth at all hazards. The death of Hector meanwhile enhanced the sorrow which he endured; but he found time to write often to Cressida, beseeching her to come again and hold her truth; till one day his false mistress, out of pity, wrote him again, in these terms:

 

“Cupide’s son, ensample of goodlihead, beauty, excellence O sword of knighthood, source of gentleness!

How might a wight in torment and in dread, And healeless,* you send as yet gladness? *devoid of health I hearteless, I sick, I in distress?

Since ye with me, nor I with you, may deal, You neither send I may nor heart nor heal.

 

“Your letters full, the paper all y-plainted, covered with Commoved have mine heart’s pitt; complainings I have eke seen with teares all depainted Your letter, and how ye require me

To come again; the which yet may not be; But why, lest that this letter founden were, No mention I make now for fear.

 

“Grievous to me, God wot, is your unrest, Your haste,* and that the goddes’ ordinance impatience It seemeth not ye take as for the best; Nor other thing is in your remembrance, As thinketh me, but only your pleasance; But be not wroth, and that I you beseech, For that I tarry is all for wicked speech. to avoid malicious gossip*

“For I have heard well more than I wend weened, thought Touching us two, how thinges have stood, Which I shall with dissimuling amend;

And, be not wroth, I have eke understood How ye ne do but holde me on hand; <87>

But now no force, I cannot in you guess no matter

But alle truth and alle gentleness.

 

“Comen I will, but yet in such disjoint jeopardy, critical I stande now, that what year or what day position That this shall be, that can I not appoint; But in effect I pray you, as I may,

For your good word and for your friendship ay; For truely, while that my life may dure, As for a friend, ye may *in me assure. depend on me*

 

“Yet pray I you, *on evil ye not take do not take it ill*

That it is short, which that I to you write; I dare not, where I am, well letters make; Nor never yet ne could I well endite;

Eke *great effect men write in place lite; men write great matter Th’ intent is all, and not the letter’s space; in little space*

And fare now well, God have you in his grace!

“La Vostre C.”

 

Though he found this letter “all strange,” and thought it like “a kalendes of change,” <88> Troilus could not believe his lady so cruel as to forsake him; but he was put out of all doubt, one day that, as he stood in suspicion and melancholy, he saw a “coat-armour” borne along the street, in token of victory, before Deiphobus his brother. Deiphobus had won it from Diomede in battle that day; and Troilus, examining it out of curiosity, found within the collar a brooch which he had given to Cressida on the morning she left Troy, and which she had pledged her faith to keep for ever in remembrance of his sorrow and of him. At this fatal discovery of his lady’s untruth, Great was the sorrow and plaint of Troilus; But forth her course Fortune ay gan to hold; Cressida lov’d the son of Tydeus,

And Troilus must weep in cares cold.

Such is the world, whoso it can behold!

In each estate is little hearte’s rest; God lend* us each to take it for the best! *grant In many a cruel battle Troilus wrought havoc among the Greeks, and often he exchanged blows and bitter words with Diomede, whom he always specially sought; but it was not their lot that either should fall by the other’s hand. The poet’s purpose, however, he tells us, is to relate, not the warlike deeds of Troilus, which Dares has fully told, but his love-fortunes: Beseeching ev’ry lady bright of hue,

And ev’ry gentle woman, *what she be, whatsoever she be*

Albeit that Cressida was untrue,

That for that guilt ye be not wroth with me; Ye may her guilt in other bookes see;

And gladder I would writen, if you lest, Of Penelope’s truth, and good Alceste.

 

Nor say I not this only all for men,

But most for women that betrayed be

Through false folk (God give them sorrow, Amen!) That with their greate wit and subtilty Betraye you; and this commoveth me

To speak; and in effect you all I pray, Beware of men, and hearken what I say.

 

Go, little book, go, little tragedy!

There God my maker, yet ere that I die, So send me might to make some comedy!

But, little book, *no making thou envy, be envious of no poetry* <89>

But subject be unto all poesy;

And kiss the steps, where as thou seest space, Of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, Lucan, Stace.

 

And, for there is so great diversity

In English, and in writing of our tongue, So pray I God, that none miswrite thee, Nor thee mismetre for default of tongue!

And read whereso thou be, or elles sung, That thou be understanden, God I ‘seech! beseech But yet to purpose of my *rather speech. earlier subject* <90>

 

The wrath, as I began you for to say,

Of Troilus the Greekes boughte dear;

For thousandes his handes *made dey, made to die*

As he that was withouten any peer,

Save in his time Hector, as I can hear; But, wellaway! save only Godde’s will, Dispiteously him slew the fierce Achill’.

 

And when that he was slain in this mannere, His lighte ghost* full blissfully is went *spirit Up to the hollowness of the seventh sphere <91>

In converse leaving ev’ry element;

And there he saw, with full advisement, observation, understanding Th’ erratic starres heark’ning harmony, With soundes full of heav’nly melody.

 

And down from thennes fast he gan advise consider, look on This little spot of earth, that with the sea Embraced is; and fully gan despise

This wretched world, and held all vanity, *To respect of the plein felicity in comparison with That is in heav’n above; and, at the last, the full felicity*

Where he was slain his looking down he cast.

 

And in himself he laugh’d right at the woe Of them that wepte for his death so fast; And damned* all our works, that follow so condemned The blinde lust, the which that may not last, And shoulden all our heart on heaven cast; while we should And forth he wente, shortly for to tell, Where as Mercury sorted him to dwell. *allotted <92>

 

Such fine* hath, lo! this Troilus for love! end Such fine hath all his greate worthiness! exalted royal rank*

Such fine hath his estate royal above!

Such fine his lust,* such fine hath his nobless! *pleasure Such fine hath false worlde’s brittleness! fickleness, instability And thus began his loving of Cresside, As I have told; and in this wise he died.

 

O young and freshe folke, *he or she, of either sex*

In which that love upgroweth with your age, Repaire home from worldly vanity,

And *of your heart upcaste the visage “lift up the countenance To thilke God, that after his image of your heart.”*

You made, and think that all is but a fair, This world that passeth soon, as flowers fair!

 

And love Him, the which that, right for love, Upon a cross, our soules for to bey, buy, redeem First starf,* and rose, and sits in heav’n above; died For he will false no wight, dare I say, *deceive, fail That will his heart all wholly on him lay; And since he best to love is, and most meek, What needeth feigned loves for to seek?

 

Lo! here of paynims* cursed olde rites! *pagans Lo! here what all their goddes may avail!

Lo! here this wretched worlde’s appetites! *end and reward Lo! here the fine and guerdon for travail, of labour*

Of Jove, Apollo, Mars, and such rascaille rabble <93>

Lo! here the form of olde clerkes’ speech, In poetry, if ye their bookes seech! seek, search L’Envoy of Chaucer.

 

O moral Gower! <94> this book I direct.

To thee, and to the philosophical Strode, <95>

To vouchesafe, where need is, to correct, Of your benignities and zeales good.

And to that soothfast Christ that *starf on rood died on the cross*

With all my heart, of mercy ever I pray, And to the Lord right thus I speak and say: “Thou One, and Two, and Three, *etern on live, eternally living*

That reignest ay in Three, and Two, and One, Uncircumscrib’d, and all may’st circumscrive, comprehend From visible and invisible fone foes Defend us in thy mercy ev’ry one;

So make us, Jesus, *for thy mercy dign, worthy of thy mercy*

For love of Maid and Mother thine benign!”

 

Explicit Liber Troili et Cresseidis. <96>

 

Notes to Troilus and Cressida

 

1. The double sorrow: First his suffering before his love was successful; and then his grief after his lady had been separated from him, and had proved unfaithful.

 

2. Tisiphone: one of the Eumenides, or Furies, who avenged on men in the next world the crimes committed on earth. Chaucer makes this grim invocation most fitly, since the Trojans were under the curse of the Eumenides, for their part in the offence of Paris in carrying off Helen, the wife of his host Menelaus, and thus impiously sinning against the laws of hospitality.

 

3. See Chaucer’s description of himself in “The House Of Fame,” and note 11 to that poem.

 

4. The Palladium, or image of Pallas (daughter of Triton and foster-sister of Athena), was said to have fallen from heaven at Troy, where Ilus was just beginning to found the city; and Ilus erected a sanctuary, in which it was preserved with great honour and care, since on its safety was supposed to depend the safety of the city. In later times a Palladium was any statue of the goddess Athena kept for the safeguard of the city that possessed it.

 

5. “Oh, very god!”: oh true divinity! — addressing Cressida.

 

6. Ascaunce: as if to say — as much as to say. The word represents “Quasi dicesse” in Boccaccio. See note 5 to the Sompnour’s Tale.

 

7. Eft: another reading is “oft.”

 

8. Arten: constrain — Latin, “arceo.”

 

9. The song is a translation of Petrarch’s 88th Sonnet, which opens thus:

“S’amor non e, che dunque e quel ch’i’sento.”

 

10. If maugre me: If (I burn) in spite of myself. The usual reading is, “If harm agree me” = if my hurt contents me: but evidently the antithesis is