O chaste goddesse of the wodes grene, To whom bothe hevene and erthe and see is sene, Quene of the regne of Pluto derk and lowe, Goddesse of maydens, that myn herte hast knowe Ful many a yeer, and woost what I desire, As keep me fro thy vengeance and thyn ire, That Attheon aboughte cruelly. Chaste goddesse, wel wostow that I Desire to been a mayden al my lyf, Ne never wol I be no love ne wyf. I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye, A mayde, and love hunting and venerye, And for to walken in the wodes wilde, And noght to been a wyf, and be with childe. Noght wol I knowe companye of man. Now help me, lady, sith ye may and can, For tho thre formes that thou hast in thee. And Palamon, that hath swich love to me, And eek Arcite, that loveth me so sore, This grace I preye thee with-oute more, As sende love and pees bitwixte hem two; And fro me turne awey hir hertes so, That al hir hote love, and hir desyr, And al hir bisy torment, and hir fyr Be queynt, or turned in another place; And if so be thou wolt not do me grace, Or if my destinee be shapen so, That I shal nedes have oon of hem two, As sende me him that most desireth me. The rime-syllables with which Chaucer ends his lines are as a rule strong and followed by a pause, or at least by the grammatical possibility of a pause, though there are exceptions like the division of 'I | desire.' The general effect of the metre is that of a succession of separate couplets, though their separation is often slight and the sentence is allowed to run on with little break through several couplets divided from each other by no break of more than a comma. When a full stop comes and ends the sentence, it is hardly ever allowed to break a line by falling at any point except the end. On the other hand it is as often as not used to divide the couplet by falling at the end not of the second but of the first line, so that the ear has to wait a moment in expectancy until the second, beginning a new sentence, catches up the rime of the first like an echo. Other, slighter pauses fall quite variably where they will, and there is no regular breathing pause or caesura dividing the line after the second or third stress.