THE CANTERBURY TALES
sorrow and heaviness but Palamon? Love distraineth him so that he goeth mad out of his wit, and thereto he is a prisoner perpetually, not only for a year. Who could properly rhyme in English his martyrdom? In sooth, not I; therefore I pass on as lightly as I can.
It fell in the seventh year, in May, the third night (as it is said in old books that tell all this story more at large), were it by fortune or destiny (by which when a thing is decreed it must be), that soon after the midnight, with the helping of a friend, Palamon broke his prison, and fast as he might go, fled the city. For he had given his gaoler drink, made of a certain wine with sleepy drugs and fine opium of Thebes, that all the night the gaoler slept, and might not awake though men should shake him. And thus as fast as ever he may he fleeth. The night is short and the day at hand, that needs he must hide, and to a grove hard by he glideth with fearful foot ; for this was his device, to hide in the grove all day and by night take his journey toward Thebes, to pray his friends to help him war on Theseus; and, shortly, either he would die or win Emily to wife,—this is the effect and his full intent.
Now will I turn unto Arcite, that little wist how nigh was his dismay till fortune had brought him in the snare.
The busy lark, messenger of morning, saluteth in her song the grey dawn; and fiery Phoebus upriseth, that all the orient laugheth with the light, and with his beams drieth in the groves the silver drops hanging on the leaves. And Arcite, who is in the royal court, chief squire to Theseus, is risen, and looketh on the merry morning ; and to do his observance to May, remembering what he longeth for, is ridden from out the court into the
field a mile or two, to take his pastime on a courser that boundeth
32
