Page:Poems, now first collected, Stedman, 1897.djvu/30

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"YE TOMBE OF YE POET CHAUCER"

Abbot and monks of Westminster
Here placed his tomb, in all men's view.
"Our Chaucer dead?"—King Harry said,—
"A mass for him, and burial due!"
This very aisle his footsteps knew;
Here Gower's benediction fell,—
Brother thou were and minstral trewe;
Now slepe thou wel.


There died with that old century's death,
I wot, five hundred years ago,
One whose blithe heart, whose morning art,
Made England's Castaly to flow.
He in whose song that fount we know,
With every tale the skylarks tell,
Had right, Saint Bennet's wall below
To slumber well.


Eftsoons his master piously
In Surrey hied him to his rest;

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