We have Mr. F. J. Furnivall’s authority, as well as internal evidence, for believing that this pathetic little poem expresses Chaucer’s feelings at the time of his expulsion from the Customs offices, the beginning of his period of misfortunes, and was written immediately after the calamity. We seem to gather scattered hints of recent ‘wrestlings’ before the blow came--vain attempts to elevate, and purify, and carry out reforms, to make straight crooked paths. Lost labour--_pain thee not all the crooked to redress!_--trusting to fortune (money being requisite to reform): for those who value peace of mind should let sleeping dogs lie. We seem to catch the echoes of stormy times, of personal recrimination, envy, hatred, and malice, against a ‘climbing’ man, protected by Court favour for many prosperous years, but at length within the reach of foes when that protection waxed powerless. Chaucer may, like many another man, have made no enemies till he was high enough to stand in some one’s light, prosperous enough to be dangerous; but his month of power in Parliament ruined him. It is pretty certain that some vote of his, while sitting for Kent, caused his dismissal from office. It was a case of win all or lose all, and he lost. To fight against such odds were as idle as undignified: surely, indeed, but courting worse injuries, ‘kicking against an awl.’ When the weak and the strong strive together, it is the weak who suffers. The criticism upon others, which had failed to do good, were now best turned philosophically upon himself. That which the fountain gave forth returns again to the fountain, as a poet 500 years later has said. It is impossible, in reading these melancholy and stately lines, not to feel that they ring true, and betray the half-sarcastic disappointment of a well-meaning man, the resignation of a religious man, and the faith in right-dealing bringing its own reward of a thoroughly honest man. It is probable that the loss to Chaucer in a pecuniary sense was very severe; and the suddenness of the blow may account for much of his after poverty.[204] The loss may have come at a time when he had debts which it would be very hard to pay out of a diminished income--debts which may have hampered his whole after-life. His appointment of a deputy to the office of Clerk of the King’s Works, in 1391, and his subsequent resignation of the office, appear to me to hint at ill-health, as may his death a year after getting his lease for fifty-three years of the tenement in Westminster, where he died.