Saturn is the Greater Infortune of the old system of astrology, and is by universal experience acknowledged to be the most potent, evil, and malignant of all the planets. Those born under him are of dark and pale complexion, with small, black, leering eyes, thick lips and nostrils, large ears, thin face, lowering looks, cloudy aspect, and seemingly melancholy and unhappy; and though they have broad shoulders, they have but short lips and a thin beard, They are in character austere and reserved, covetous, laborious, and revengeful; constant in friendship, and good haters. The most remarkable and certain characteristic of the Saturnine man is that, as an old author observes 'he will never look thee in the face.' 'If they have to love any one, these Saturnines,' says another old author, 'they love most constantly; and if they hate, they hate to the death.' The persons signified symbolically by Saturn are grandparents, and other old persons, day labourers, paupers, beggars, clowns, husbandmen of the meaner sort, and especially undertakers, sextons, and gravediggers. Chaucer thus presents the chief effects which Saturn produces in the fortunes of men and nations--Saturn himself being the speaker:-- ... quod Saturne My cours, that hath so wide for to turne, Hath more power than wot any man. Min is the drenching in the sea so wan, Min is the prison in the derke cote, Min is the strangel and hanging by the throte, The murmure and the cherles rebelling, The groyning, and the prive empoysoning, I do vengaunce and pleine correction, While I dwell in the signe of the leon; Min is the ruine of the high halles, The falling of the toures and of the walles Upon the minour or the carpenter: I slew Sampson in shaking the piler. Min ben also the maladies colde, The derke tresons, and the castes olde: My loking is the fader of pestilence.