Читать книгу English Verse - Raymond Macdonald Alden - Страница 76

In a chirche þer i con knel

Þis ender day in on morwenynge,

Me lyked þe servise wonder wel,

For þi þe lengore con i lynge.

I seiȝ a clerk a book forþ bringe,

Þat prikked was in mony a plas;

Faste he souȝte what he schulde synge,

And al was Deo gracias!

(From the Vernon and Simeon MSS.; in Anglia, vii. 287.)

This Julius to the Capitolie wente

Upon a day, as he was wont to goon,

And in the Capitolie anon him hente

This false Brutus, and his othere foon,

And stikede him with boydekins anoon

With many a wounde, and thus they lete him lye;

But never gronte he at no strook but oon,

Or elles at two, but if his storie lye.

(Chaucer: The Monk's Tale, ll. 713–720. ab. 1375.)

This stanza is sometimes called the "Monk's Tale stanza," from its use by Chaucer in that single tale of the Canterbury group. Although it has been little used by later poets, it may have given Spenser a suggestion for his characteristic stanza (see below, p. 102).

Farewell! if ever fondest prayer

For other's weal availed on high,

Mine will not all be lost in air,

But waft thy name beyond the sky.

'Twere vain to speak, to weep, to sigh:

Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,

When rung from guilt's expiring eye,

Are in that word—Farewell!—Farewell!

(Byron: Farewell, if ever fondest prayer. 1808.)