Chaucer's Works, Volume 3 — The House of Fame; The Legend of Good Women; The Treatise on the Astrolabe; The Sources of the Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

ultra promissum tempus abesse queror.

Cornua quum Lunae pleno semel orbe coissent,

litoribus nostris ancora pacta tua est.

Luna quater latuit, toto quater orbe recrevit,

nec uehit Actæas Sithonis unda rates.

Tempora si numeres, bene quae numeramus amantes,

non uenit ante suum nostra querela diem.'

Hostess-e is trisyllabic; MS. C. has—'Ostess-e thyn.'

[2502]. Highte, promised. But Chaucer seems to have mistaken the sense of Ovid's fourth line (in the note to l. 2496).

[2508]. 'Sithonis unda'; see note to l. 2496. Here Sithonis is an adj. (gen. Sithonidis), and means 'Sithonian,' i.e. Thracian; because Sithon or Sitho, her father, was king of Thrace. I substitute Sitho for the MS. spellings.