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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=540160" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Prioress’s Tale [from Chaucer]</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Call up him who left half told<br>The story of Cambuscan bold.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O LORD, our Lord! how wondrously,' (quoth she)<br>'Thy name in this large world is spread abroad!<br>For not alone by men of dignity<br>Thy worship is performed and precious laud;<br>But by the mouths of children, gracious God!<br>Thy goodness is set forth; they when they lie<br>Upon the breast thy name do glorify.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Wherefore in praise, the worthiest that I may,<br>Jesu! of thee, and the white Lily-flower<br>Which did thee bear, and is a Maid for aye,<br>To tell a story I will use my power;<br>Not that I may increase her honour's dower,<br>For she herself is honour, and the root<br>Of goodness, next her Son, our soul's best boot.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O Mother Maid! O Maid and Mother free!<br>O bush unburnt! burning in Moses' sight!<br>That down didst ravish from the Deity,<br>Through humbleness, the spirit that did alight<br>Upon thy heart, whence, through that glory's might,<br>Conceived was the Father's sapience,<br>Help me to tell it in thy reverence!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Lady! thy goodness, thy magnificence,<br>Thy virtue, and thy great humility,<br>Surpass all science and all utterance;<br>For sometimes, Lady! ere men pray to thee<br>Thou goest before in thy benignity,<br>The light to us vouchsafing of thy prayer,<br>To be our guide unto thy Son so dear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'My knowledge is so weak, O blissful Queen!<br>To tell abroad thy mighty worthiness,<br>That I the weight of it may not sustain;<br>But as a child of twelvemonths old or less,<br>That laboureth his language to express,<br>Even so fare I; and therefore, I thee pray,<br>Guide thou my song which I of thee shall say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'There was in Asia, in a mighty town,<br>'Mong Christian folk, a street where Jews might be,<br>Assigned to them and given them for their own<br>By a great Lord, for gain and usury,<br>Hateful to Christ and to his company;<br>And through this street who list might ride and wend;<br>Free was it, and unbarred at either end.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'A little school of Christian people stood<br>Down at the farther end, in which there were<br>A nest of children come of Christian blood,<br>That learned in that school from year to year<br>Such sort of doctrine as men used there,<br>That is to say, to sing and read also,<br>As little children in their childhood do.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Among these children was a Widow's son,<br>A little scholar, scarcely seven years old,<br>Who day by day unto this school hath gone,<br>And eke, when he the image did behold<br>Of Jesu's Mother, as he had been told,<br>This Child was wont to kneel adown and say<br>'Ave Marie,' as he goeth by the way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'This Widow thus her little Son hath taught<br>Our blissful Lady, Jesu's Mother dear,<br>To worship aye, and he forgat it not;<br>For simple infant hath a ready ear.<br>Sweet is the holiness of youth: and hence,<br>Calling to mind this matter when I may,<br>Saint Nicholas in my presence standeth aye,<br>For he so young to Christ did reverence.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">X</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'This little Child, while in the school he sate<br>His Primer conning with an earnest cheer,<br>The whilst the rest their anthem-book repeat<br>The 'Alma Redemptoris' did he hear;<br>And as he durst he drew him near and near,<br>And hearkened to the words and to the note,<br>Till the first verse he learned it all by rote.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'This Latin knew he nothing what it said,<br>For he too tender was of age to know;<br>But to his comrade he repaired, and prayed<br>That he the meaning of this song would show,<br>And unto him declare why men sing so;<br>This oftentimes that he might be at ease,<br>This child did him beseech on his bare knees.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'His Schoolfellow, who elder was than he,<br>Answered him thus:--'This song, I have heard say,<br>Was fashioned for our blissful Lady free;<br>Her to salute, and also her to pray<br>To be our help upon our dying day:<br>If there is more in this, I know it not;<br>Song do I learn,--small grammar I have got.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''And is this song fashioned in reverence<br>Of Jesu's Mother?' said this Innocent;<br>'Now, certes, I will use my diligence<br>To con it all ere Christmas-tide be spent;<br>Although I for my Primer shall be shent,<br>And shall be beaten three times in an hour,<br>Our Lady I will praise with all my power.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'His Schoolfellow, whom he had so besought,<br>As they went homeward taught him privily<br>And then he sang it well and fearlessly,<br>From word to word according to the note:<br>Twice in a day it passed through his throat;<br>Homeward and schoolward whensoe'er he went,<br>On Jesu's Mother fixed was his intent.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Through all the Jewry (this before said I)<br>This little Child, as he came to and fro,<br>Full merrily then would he sing and cry,<br>O 'Alma Redemptoris!' high and low:<br>The sweetness of Christ's Mother pierced so<br>His heart, that her to praise, to her to pray,<br>He cannot stop his singing by the way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The Serpent, Satan, our first foe, that hath<br>His wasp's nest in Jew's heart, upswelled--'O woe,<br>O Hebrew people!' said he in his wrath,<br>'Is it an honest thing? Shall this be so?<br>That such a Boy where'er he lists shall go<br>In your despite, and sing his hymns and saws,<br>Which is against the reverence of our laws!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'From that day forward have the Jews conspired<br>Out of the world this Innocent to chase;<br>And to this end a Homicide they hired,<br>That in an alley had a privy place,<br>And, as the Child 'gan to the school to pace,<br>This cruel Jew him seized, and held him fast<br>And cut his throat, and in a pit him cast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I say that him into a pit they threw,<br>A loathsome pit, whence noisome scents exhale;<br>O cursed folk! away, ye Herods new!<br>What may your ill intentions you avail?<br>Murder will out; certes it will not fail;<br>Know, that the honour of high God may spread,<br>The blood cries out on your accursed deed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O Martyr 'stablished in virginity!<br>Now may'st thou sing for aye before the throne,<br>Following the Lamb celestial,' quoth she,<br>'Of which the great Evangelist, Saint John,<br>In Patmos wrote, who saith of them that go<br>Before the Lamb singing continually,<br>That never fleshly woman they did know.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Now this poor widow waiteth all that night<br>After her little Child, and he came not;<br>For which, by earliest glimpse of morning light,<br>With face all pale with dread and busy thought,<br>She at the School and elsewhere him hath sought<br>Until thus far she learned, that he had been<br>In the Jews' street, and there he last was seen.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'With Mother's pity in her breast enclosed<br>She goeth, as she were half out of her mind,<br>To every place wherein she hath supposed<br>By likelihood her little Son to find;<br>And ever on Christ's Mother meek and kind<br>She cried, till to the Jewry she was brought,<br>And him among the accursed Jews she sought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'She asketh, and she piteously doth pray<br>To every Jew that dwelleth in that place<br>To tell her if her child had passed that way;<br>They all said--Nay; but Jesu of his grace<br>Gave to her thought, that in a little space<br>She for her Son in that same spot did cry<br>Where he was cast into a pit hard by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'O thou great God that dost perform thy laud<br>By mouths of Innocents, lo! here thy might;<br>This gem of chastity, this emerald,<br>And eke of martyrdom this ruby bright,<br>There, where with mangled throat he lay upright,<br>The 'Alma Redemptoris' 'gan to sing,<br>So loud, that with his voice the place did ring.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The Christian folk that through the Jewry went<br>Come to the spot in wonder at the thing;<br>And hastily they for the Provost sent;<br>Immediately he came, not tarrying,<br>And praiseth Christ that is our heavenly King,<br>And eke his Mother, honour of Mankind:<br>Which done he bade that they the Jews should bind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'This Child with piteous lamentation then<br>Was taken up, singing his song alway;<br>And with procession great and pomp of men<br>To the next Abbey him they bare away;<br>His Mother swooning by the body lay:<br>And scarcely could the people that were near<br>Remove this second Rachel from the bier.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Torment and shameful death to every one<br>This Provost doth for those bad Jews prepare<br>That of this murder wist, and that anon:<br>Such wickedness his judgments cannot spare;<br>Who will do evil, evil shall he bear;<br>Them therefore with wild horses did he draw,<br>And after that he hung them by the law.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Upon his bier this Innocent doth lie<br>Before the altar while the Mass doth last:<br>The Abbot with his convent's company<br>Then sped themselves to bury him full fast;<br>And, when they holy water on him cast,<br>Yet spake this Child when sprinkled was the water,<br>And sang, 'O Alma Redemptoris Mater!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'This Abbot, for he was a holy man,<br>As all Monks are, or surely ought to be,<br>In supplication to the Child began<br>Thus saying, 'O dear Child! I summon thee<br>In virtue of the holy Trinity<br>Tell me the cause why thou dost sing this hymn<br>Since that thy throat is cut, as it doth seem.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow,'<br>Said this young Child, 'and by the law of kind<br>I should have died, yea many hours ago;<br>But Jesus Christ, as in the books ye find,<br>Will that his glory last, and be in mind;<br>And, for the worship of his Mother dear,<br>Yet may I sing 'O Alma!' loud and clear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXX</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''This well of mercy, Jesu's Mother sweet,<br>After my knowledge I have loved alway;<br>And in the hour when I my death did meet<br>To me she came, and thus to me did say,<br>'Thou in thy dying sing this holy lay,'<br>As ye have heard; and soon as I had sung<br>Methought she laid a grain upon my tongue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXI</div><div style="margin:10px 0">''Wherefore I sing, nor can from song refrain,<br>In honour of that blissful Maiden free,<br>Till from my tongue off-taken is the grain;<br>And after that thus said she unto me;<br>'My little Child, then will I come for thee<br>Soon as the grain from off thy tongue they take:<br>Be not dismayed, I will not thee forsake!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'This holy Monk, this Abbot--him mean I,<br>Touched then his tongue, and took away the grain;<br>And he gave up the ghost full peacefully;<br>And, when the Abbot had this wonder seen,<br>His salt tears trickled down like showers of rain;<br>And on his face he dropped upon the ground,<br>And still he lay as if he had been bound.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXIII</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Eke the whole Convent on the pavement lay,<br>Weeping and praising Jesu's Mother dear;<br>And after that they rose, and took their way,<br>And lifted up this Martyr from the bier,<br>And in a tomb of precious marble clear<br>Enclosed his uncorrupted body sweet.--<br>Where'er he be, God grant us him to meet!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXIV</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Young Hew of Lincoln! in like sort laid low<br>By cursed Jews--thing well and widely known,<br>For it was done a little while ago--<br>Pray also thou for us, while here we tarry<br>Weak sinful folk, that God, with pitying eye,<br>In mercy would his mercy multiply<br>On us, for reverence of his Mother Mary!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=William+Wordsworth">William Wordsworth</a><div class=q>
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The story of Cambuscan bold.'

I

'O LORD, our Lord! how wondrously,' (quoth she)
'Thy name in this large world is spread abroad!
For not alone by men of dignity
Thy worship is performed and precious laud;
But by th..."></div>
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