Bright was the day, and blue the firmament; Phoebus of gold his streames down had sent To gladden every flow’r with his warmness; He was that time in Geminis, I guess, But little from his declination Of Cancer, Jove’s exaltation. And so befell, in that bright morning-tide, That in the garden, on the farther side, Pluto, that is the king of Faerie, And many a lady in his company Following his wife, the queen Proserpina, — Which that he ravished out of Ethna,<26> While that she gather’d flowers in the mead (In Claudian ye may the story read, How in his grisly chariot he her fet*), — *fetched This king of Faerie adown him set Upon a bank of turfes fresh and green, And right anon thus said he to his queen. “My wife,” quoth he, “there may no wight say nay, — Experience so proves it every day, — The treason which that woman doth to man. Ten hundred thousand stories tell I can Notable of your untruth and brittleness * *inconstancy O Solomon, richest of all richess, Full fill’d of sapience and worldly glory, Full worthy be thy wordes of memory To every wight that wit and reason can. * *knows Thus praised he yet the bounte* of man: *goodness ‘Among a thousand men yet found I one, But of all women found I never none.’ <27> Thus said this king, that knew your wickedness; And Jesus, Filius Sirach, <28> as I guess, He spake of you but seldom reverence. A wilde fire and corrupt pestilence So fall upon your bodies yet to-night! Ne see ye not this honourable knight? Because, alas! that he is blind and old, His owen man shall make him cuckold. Lo, where he sits, the lechour, in the tree. Now will I granten, of my majesty, Unto this olde blinde worthy knight, That he shall have again his eyen sight, When that his wife will do him villainy; Then shall be knowen all her harlotry, Both in reproof of her and other mo’.” “Yea, Sir,” quoth Proserpine,” and will ye so? Now by my mother Ceres’ soul I swear That I shall give her suffisant answer, And alle women after, for her sake; That though they be in any guilt y-take, With face bold they shall themselves excuse, And bear them down that woulde them accuse. For lack of answer, none of them shall dien.