Her name, he says about the same time, is Bounty, Beauty, and Pleasance; but her surname is Fair-Ruthless. Again, he tells us how he ran to Pity with his complaints of Love’s tyranny; but, alas!
| I found her dead, and buried in an heart.... And no wight wot that she is dead but I. |
The cruel fair stands high above him, a lady of royal excellence, humble indeed of heart, yet he scarce dares to call himself her servant—
| Have mercy on me, thou serenest queen, That you have sought so tenderly and yore, Let some stream of your light on me be seen, That love and dread you ever longer the more; For, soothly for to say, I bear the sore, And though I be not cunning for to plain, For Goddës love, have mercy on my pain! |
But all is vain, for in the end “Ye recke not whether I float or sink.” Like the contemporary poets of Piers Plowman, Chaucer discovered soon enough that the high road to wisdom lies through “Suffer-both-well-and-woe;” and that, before we can possess our souls, we must “see much and suffer more.”[25] There is more than mere graceful irony in the beautiful lines with which, a few years later, he begins his “Troilus and Criseyde.” He is (he says) the bondservant of Love, one whose own woes help him to comfort others’ pain, or again, to enlist the sympathy of Fortune’s favourite—
| But ye lovéres, that bathen in gladness, If any drop of pity in you be, Remembreth you on passéd heaviness That ye have felt, and on th’ adversitie Of other folk, and thinketh how that ye Have felt that Lovë durstë you displease, Or ye have won him with too great an ease. And prayeth for them that be in the case Of Troilus, as ye may after hear, That Love them bring in heaven to solace; And eke for me prayeth to God so dear.... And biddeth eke for them that be despaired In love, that never will recovered be.... And biddeth eke for them that be at ease, That God them grant aye good perséverance, And send them might their ladies so to please That it to Love be worship and pleasance. For so hope I my soulë best t’ advance, To pray for them that Lovë’s servants be, And write their woe, and live in charitie. |