*Delicacies. . . . . . . . So forth she goes, trusting of all this wealth With her sister her part so for to shape, That if she might there keep herself in health, To live a Lady, while her life do last. And to the door now is she come by stealth, And with her foot anon she scrapes full fast. Th' other for fear durst not well scarce appear, Of every noise so was the wretch aghast. At last she askéd softly who was there; And in her language as well as she could, 'Peep,' quoth the other, 'sister, I am here.' 'Peace,' quoth the town mouse, 'why speaketh thou so loud?' But by the hand she took her fair and well. 'Welcome,' quoth she, 'my sister by the Rood.' She feasted her that joy it was to tell The fare they had, they drank the wine so clear; And as to purpose now and then it fell, So cheered her with, 'How, sister, what cheer.' Amid this joy befell a sorry chance, That welladay, the stranger bought full dear The fare she had. For as she looked ascance, Under a stool she spied two flaming eyes, In a round head, with sharp ears. In France Was never mouse so feared, for the unwise Had not ere seen such beast before. Yet had nature taught her after her guise To know her foe, and dread him evermore. The town mouse fled, she knew whither to go; The other had no shift, but wonders sore, Fear'd of her life! At home she wished her tho'; And to the door, alas! as she did skip (The heaven it would, lo, and eke her chance was so) At the threshold her sill foot did trip; And ere she might recover it again, The traitor Cat had caught her by the hip And made her there against her will remain, That had forgot her poor surety and rest, For seeming wealth, wherein she thought to reign." That is not the end of the poem. Wyatt points the moral. "Alas," he says, "how men do seek the best and find the worst." "Although thy head were hooped with gold," thou canst not rid thyself of care. Content thyself, then, with what is allotted thee and use it well. This satire Wyatt wrote while living quietly in the country, having barely escaped with his life from the King's wrath. But although he escaped the scaffold, he died soon after in his King's service. Riding on the King's business in the autumn of 1542 he became overheated, fell into a fever, and died. He was buried at Sherborne. No stone marks his resting-place, but his friend and fellow-poet, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, wrote a noble elegy:-- "A hea, where Wisdom mysteries did frame; Whose hammers beat still, in that lively brain, As on a stithy* where that some work of fame Was daily wrought, to turn to Britain's gain.