The day go'th fast, and after that com'th eve And yet came not to Troilus Criseyde. He looketh forth by hedge, by tree, by greve, [grove And far his head over the wall he laid ... "Have here my truth, I see her! Yond she is! Have up thine eyen, man! May'st thou not see?" Pandarus answered, "Nay, so mote I the! All wrong, by God! What say'st thou, man? Where art? That I see yond is but a farë-cart." The warden of the gatës gan to call The folk which that without the gatës were, And bade them driven in their beastës all, Or all the night they musten bleven there; [remain And far within the night, with many a tear, This Troilus gan homeward for to ride, For well he seeth it helpeth nought t' abide. And far within the night, while the "uncunning porters" sing over their liquor or snore on their pallets, Chaucer turns and returns the leaves of Virgil or Ovid, of Dante or the "Romance of the Rose." Does he not also, to poor Philippa's disgust, "laugh full fast" to himself sometimes over that witty and ungallant book of satires which contains "of wicked wives ... more legendës and lives than be of goodë wives in the Bible"? It is difficult to escape from this conviction. His "Wife of Bath" cites the treatises in question too fully and too well to make it probable that Chaucer wrote from mere memory. Remembering this probability, and the practical certainty that, like his contemporaries, Chaucer needed to read aloud for the full comprehension of what he had under his eyes, we shall then find nothing unexpected in his pretty plain allusions to reprisals. Sweet as honey in the mouth, his books proved sometimes bitter in the belly, like that of the Apocalypse. "Late to bed" suits ill with "early to rise," and the poet hints pretty plainly that an imperious and somewhat unsympathetic "Awake, Geoffrey!" was often the first word he heard in the morning. When the Golden Eagle caught the sleeping poet up to heaven-- At the last to me he spake In mannës voice, and said "Awake! And be not so aghast, for shame!" And called me then by my name And, for I should the better abraid [rouse Me dreamed, "Awake!" to me he said Right in the samë voice and steven [tone That useth one I couldë neven; [name And with that voice, sooth for to say'n My mindë came to me again; For it was goodly said to me, So it was never wont to be. "House of Fame," ii., 47. CHAPTER IX TOWN AND COUNTRY "For never to my mind was evening yet But was far beautifuller than its day." BROWNING "Wherefore is the sun red at even? For he goeth toward hell." ("The Master of Oxford's Catechism" (XV. cent.); "Reliquiæ Antiquæ," i., 232.)