POEMS

OF

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

The Canterbury Tales.

THE SECOUNDE NONNES TALE.

[THIS tale, except the opening address to the Blessed Virgin, is literally translated from the Legenda Aurea, a collection of treatises on the festivals of the Church, written by Jacobus à Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, in the latter end of the thirteenth century. The custom of collecting the Acts of the Martyrs—that is, the accounts of their martyrdom,—and reading them aloud in the Church on the anniversary of their death, for the encouragement of the faithful, was very early introduced. The Acts of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Bishop of Ephesus, and a Disciple of the Apostle John, who suffered A.D. 168, have come down to us in this shape, and are much esteemed by divines of the Church of England, as the earliest authentic ecclesiastical record after the Acts of the Apostles. See Bingham's Antiquities, book xiii. c. 9. Saint Cecilia probably suffered in the reign of Alexander Severus, in the third century, as stated in her life. The acts of her martyrdom bear many internal evidences of authenticity, though disfigured by the false taste of the ecclesiastical rhetoricians of the fourth and fifth centuries, who probably introduced the miraculous circumstances and the dialogue between her and the prætor, just as Sallust and Robertson put imaginary speeches into the mouths of Catiline and Columbus.

Of Chaucer's accuracy in the delineation of the condition and habits of the early Christians, the catacombs still remain unimpeachable witnesses. These subterranean sepulchres, or 'seyntes buriels,' as they are called in the tale, were the refuge of the early Church of Rome, with its chief Bishop Urban. Here, among the refuse of the people, the fax Romuli, was concocted that mighty conspiracy against the established religion, which the philosophers and statesmen of Rome hardly knew whether to scorn or to fear. From its ghastly dwelling among the bones of the dead it occasionally emerged to gather its proselytes from the slave-gang, the senate, and the palace of Cæsar; until at length the patriots, the upholders of the political religion, under whose auspices Rome had gathered her laurels both in literature and arms, found themselves in a small but respectable minority; while the despised conspiracy had literally, as well as metaphorically, cut the ground from under their feet. From the moment when Christianity became a moving power in the state, the Roman nationality crumbled to pieces, superseded by the more comprehensive bond of Christian brotherhood. Of this tale, the language and versification, the only elements that properly belong to Chaucer, are marked with his usual force and pathos.]

THE minister and the norice unto vices,

TH

Which that men clepe in Englisch ydelnesse,
The porter at the gates is of delicis;

To eschiewe, and by her contrary hire oppresse,
That is to say, by leful besynesse,

Wel oughte we to do al oure entente,

Lest that the fend thurgh ydelnesse us hente.1
For he that with his thousand cordes slye
Continuelly us wayteth to byclappe,
Whan he may man in ydelnes espye,

1 The opening stanzas against idleness are taken from Jehan de Vignay's introduction to his French translation of the Legenda Aurea; [the rest is from the original Latin.-W. W. S.]

He can so lightly cacche him in his trappe,
Til that a man be hent right by the lappe,
He is nought ware the fend hath him in honde;
Wel oughte we wirche, and ydelnes withstonde.
And though men dredde never for to deye,
Yet seen men wel by resoun douteles,
That ydelnes is rote of sloggardye,

Of which ther cometh never good encres;
And sin that slouth hem1 holdeth in a lees,
Oonly to sleep, and for to ete and drynke,
And to devoure al that other swynke.

And for to put us from such ydelnes,
That cause is of so gret confusioun,
I have her doon my faithful busynes
After the legende in translacioun
Right of this glorious lif and passioun.

Thou with thi garlond, wrought with rose and lylye,* The mene I, mayde and martir Cecilie;

And thou, that flour of virgines art alle, Of whom that Bernard lust so wel to write, To the at my bygynnyng first I calle; Thou comfort of us wrecches, do me endite Thy maydenes deth, that wan thurgh hire merite

1 Hem is adopted from Tyrwhitt as better than he, the reading of the Harl. MS.

2 Symbolical of her bloody martyrdom and virgin purity. Thus in the metrical Life of St. Werburgh, by Bradshawe, a Benedictine of the sixteenth century:

Vyrgyns them folowed, crowned with the lily,
Among whom our Lady chefe president was;
Some crowned with roses for their great victory.

3 Saint Bernard's great work is a series of eloquent discourses on the Song of Solomon, which he interprets as prophetic of the incarnation of God the Son, the Bride being the blessed Virgin. She is said to have appeared to him in a vision, while he was engaged in the composition of these discourses, and, in answer to his prayer, Monstra te esse matrem, to have refreshed his emaciated frame with nourishment drawn from her bosom. This allegory forms the subject of a very beautiful woodcut prefixed to his Life in Jehan de Vignay's Legends Dorée, and of Murillo's celebrated picture.

Theternal lif, and of the feend victoric,
As man may after reden in hir storie.

Thou mayde and moder, doughter of thi sone,
Thow welle of mercy, synful soules cure,
In whom that God of bountes chees to wone;
Thou humble and heyh over every creature,
Thow nobelest so ferforth oure nature,

That no disdeyn the maker had of kynde
His sone in blood and fleissh to clothe and wynde.'
Withinne the cloyster of thi blisful sydes,
Took mannes schap the eternal love and pees,
That of the trine compas lord and guyde is,
Whom erthe, and see, and heven out of relees'
Ay herien; and thou, virgine wemmeles,
Bar of thy body, and dwellest mayden pure,
The creatour of every creature.

3

Assembled is in the magnificence

With mercy, goodnes, and with such pitee,
That thou, that art the soune of excellence,
Not oonly helpist hem that prayen the,
But often tyme of thy benignite

Ful frely, er that men thin help biseche.
Thou gost biforn, and art her lyfes leche.

Now help, thou meke and blisful faire mayde,
Me flemed wrecche, in this desert of galle;
Thenk on the womman Cananee,* that sayde
That whelpes ete some of the crommes alle
That from her lordes table ben i-falle;

1 The same thought occurs in the hymn of St. Ambrose, called the Te Deum. When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb.'

2 All the best MSS. concur in this reading, and therefore I have followed them, though I confess that I do not clearly understand the phrase; unless perhaps it mean, without release; without being ever released from their duty.-T. Without relees would seem to signify without ceasing, sans relais.

3 Tyrwhitt remarks a similarity between this stanza and the fourth stanza of The Prioresses Tale.

4 Harl. MS., Canace. Matt. xv