The Clerk’s TaleThe Prologue
“Sir Clerk of Oxenford,” our Hoste said,“Ye ride as still and coy, as doth a maidThat were new spoused, sitting at the board:This day I heard not of your tongue a word.I trow ye study about some sophime:But Solomon saith, every thing hath time.For Godde’s sake, be of better cheer,It is no time for to study here.Tell us some merry tale, by your fay;For what man that is entered in a play,He needes must unto that play assent.But preache not, as friars do in Lent,To make us for our olde sinnes weep,Nor that thy tale make us not to sleep.Tell us some merry thing of aventures.Your terms, your coloures, and your figures,Keep them in store, till so be ye inditeHigh style, as when that men to kinges write.Speake so plain at this time, I you pray,That we may understande what ye say.”
This worthy Clerk benignely answer’d;“Hoste,” quoth he, “I am under your yerd,Ye have of us as now the governance,And therefore would I do you obeisance,As far as reason asketh, hardily:I will you tell a tale, which that ILearn’d at Padova of a worthy clerk,As proved by his wordes and his werk.He is now dead, and nailed in his chest,I pray to God to give his soul good rest.Francis Petrarc’, the laureate poet,Highte this clerk, whose rhetoric so sweetIllumin’d all Itale of poetry,As Linian did of philosophy,Or law, or other art particulere:But death, that will not suffer us dwell hereBut as it were a twinkling of an eye,Them both hath slain, and alle we shall die.
“But forth to tellen of this worthy man,That taughte me this tale, as I began,I say that first he with high style inditeth(Ere he the body of his tale writeth)A proem, in the which describeth hePiedmont, and of Saluces the country,And speaketh of the Pennine hilles high,That be the bounds of all West Lombardy:And of Mount Vesulus in special,Where as the Po out of a welle smallTaketh his firste springing and his source,That eastward aye increaseth in his courseT’Emilia-ward, to Ferraro, and Venice,The which a long thing were to devise.And truely, as to my judgement,Me thinketh it a thing impertinent,Save that he would conveye his mattere:But this is the tale, which that ye shall hear.”