"Courteous lady, be contented; Here comes all that breeds the strife; I in England have already A sweet woman to my wife: 70 I will not falsifie my vow for gold or gain, Nor yet for all the fairest dames that live in Spain." "Oh how happy is that woman That enjoys so true a friend! Many days of joy God send you! 75 Of my suit I'll make an end: On my knees I pardon crave for this offence, Which love and true affection did first commence. "Commend me to thy loving lady; Bear to her this chain of gold, 80 And these bracelets for a token; Grieving that I was so bold. All my jewels in like sort bear thou with thee, For these are fitting for thy wife, and not for me. "I will spend my days in prayer, 85 Love and all her laws defie; In a nunnery will I shroud me, Far from other company: But ere my prayers have end, be sure of this, [To pray] for thee and for thy love I will not miss. 90 "Thus farewell, most gentle captain, And farewell my heart's content! Count not Spanish ladies wanton, Though to thee my love was bent: Joy and true prosperity goe still with thee!" 95 "The like fall ever to thy share, most fair lady." PATIENT GRISSEL. The story of Griselda was first told in the _Decameron_. Boccaccio derived the incidents from Petrarch, and Petrarch seems to have communicated them also to Chaucer, who (in his _Clerk of Oxenford's Tale_) first made known the tale to English readers. The theme was subsequently treated in a great variety of ways.[2] Two plays upon the subject are known to have been written, one of which (by Dekker, Chettle and Haughton) has been printed by the Shakespeare Society, while the other, an older production of the close of Henry VIII.'s reign, is lost. About the middle of the sixteenth century, (1565,) a _Song of Patient Grissell_ is entered in the Stationers' Registers, and a prose history the same year. The earliest edition of the popular prose history as yet recovered, dated 1619, has been reprinted in the third volume of the Percy Society's Publications. The ballad here given is taken from Thomas Deloney's _Garland of Good Will_, a collection which was printed some time before 1596. It was circulated after that time, and probably even before the compilation of the Garland, as a broadside, in black-letter, and also, with the addition of a prose introduction and conclusion, as a tract or chap-book. In this last form it is printed in the above-mentioned volume of the Percy Society. The ballad in its proper simplicity is inserted in _A Collection of Old Ballads_, i. 252. Percy's _Patient Countess_ (_Reliques_, i. 310) is extracted from _Albion's England_.