Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909.
Eclogue: A Man, a Woman, Sir Roger
Thomas Chatterton (17521770)
WOULD’ST thou know nature in her better part? | Go, search the huts and bordels of the hind; | If they have any, it is rough-made art, | In them you see the naked form of kind; | Haveth your mind a liking of a mind? | Would it know every thing, as it might be? | Would it hear phrase of vulgar from the hind, | Without wiseacre words and knowledge free? | If so, read this, which I disporting penned, | If naught beside, its rhyme may it commend. Man. | But whither, fair maid, do ye go? | O where do you bend your way? | I will know whither you go, | I will not be answered nay. Woman. | To Robin and Nell, all down in the dell, | To help them at making of hay. Man. | Sir Roger, the parson, have hired me there, | Come, come, let us trip it away, | We’ll work and we’ll sing, and we’ll drink of strong beer, | As long as the merry summer’s day. Woman. | How hard is my doom to wurch! | Much is my woe: | Dame Agnes, who lies in the church | With birlette gold, | With gilded aumeres, strong, untold, | What was she more than me, to be so? Man. | I see Sir Roger from afar, | Tripping over the lea; | I ask why the loverd’s son | Is more than me. Sir Roger. | The sultry sun doth hie apace his wain, | From every beam a seed of life do fall; | Quickly scille up the hay upon the plain, | Methinks the cocks beginneth to grow tall. | This is alyche our doom; the great, the small, | Must wither and be dried by deathìs dart. | See! the sweet floweret hath no sweet at all; | It with the rank weed beareth equal part. | The craven, warrior, and the wise be blent, | Alyche to dry away with those they did lament. Man. | All-a-boon, Sir Priest, all-a-boon! | By your priestship, now say unto me; | Sir Gaufrid the knight, who liveth hard by, | Why should he than me be more great, | In honour, knighthood, and estate? Sir Roger. | Attourne thine eyes around this hayèd mee; | Carefully look around the chaper dell; | An answer to thy barganette here see, | This withered floweret will a lesson tell; | Arist, it blew, it flourished, and did well, | Looking disdainfully on the neighbour green; | Yet with the deignèd green its glory fell, | Eftsoon it shrank upon the day-burnt plain, | Did not its look, whilèst it there did stand, | To crop it in the bud move some dread hand?
| Such is the way of life; the loverd’s ente | Moveth the robber him therefor to slea; | If thou hast ease, the shadow of content, | Believe the truth, there’s none more haile than thee. | Thou workest; well, can that a trouble be? | Sloth more would jade thee than the roughest day. | Could’st thou the hidden part of soulès see, | Thou would’st eftsoon see truth in what I say. | But let me hear thy way of life, and then | Hear thou from me the lives of other men. Man. | I rise with the sun, | Like him to drive the wain, | And ere my work is done, | I sing a song or twain. | I follow the plough-tail, | With a long jubb of ale.
| But of the maidens, oh! | It lacketh not to tell; | Sir Priest might not cry woe, | Could his bull do as well. | I dance the best heiedeygnes, | And foil the wisest feygnes.
| On every saint’s high-day | With the minstrel am I seen, | All a-footing it away | With maidens on the green. | But oh! I wish to be more great | In glory, tenure, and estate. Sir Roger. | Hast thou not seen a tree upon a hill, | Whose unlist branches reachen far to sight? | When furious tempests do the heaven fill, | It shaketh dire, in dole and much affright; | Whilst the dwarf floweret, with humility dight, | Standeth unhurt, unquashèd by the storm. | Such is a picte of life; the man of might | Is tempest-chafed, his woe great as his form; | Thyself, a floweret of a small account, | Wouldst harder feel the wind, as thou didst higher mount.
|