The Clerk's Prologue
"SIR CLERK of Oxford," said our host, "ye ride as shy and still as a maid newly wedded and sitting at the board. I have heard never a sound from your tongue this day. I trow ye study about some sophism; but Solomon saith: 'Every thing hath its time.' For God's sake be of better cheer; this is no time to ponder. Tell us some merry tale, by your faith; for the man that is entered into a game he needs must agree unto the terms of the game. But preach not as friars do in Lent, to make us weep for our old sins, nor so as to put us to sleep with thy tale. Tell us some merry thing of adventures. Your terms, your colours and your figures of logic keep them in store till so be ye may endite in high style, as when men write to kings. Speak at this time I pray you so plain that we may understand what ye say."
This worthy clerk answered courteously: "Host," quoth he, "I am under your rod; ye have the governance of us at this time, and therefore will I render you obedience as far, certainly, as reason asketh. I will tell you a tale which I learned at Padua from a worthy clerk, as his words and his work have proved him. He is dead now and nailed in his chest. I pray God give peace to his soul!
"Francis Petrarch was the name of this clerk, the laureate poet whose sweet rhetoric illumined all Italy with poetry, as Linian did with philosophy or law or some other special art.
But death, that will not suffer us to dwell here but, as it were, the
144
