GILL: “Stop! Your tournament, father, seems too long drawn out,
With quite too much combating and knocking about.
MYSELF: I hope you're wrong, my dear, although
Who knows? Perhaps, it may be so.
GILL: And such scrappy bits of love-making you write;
You seem to prefer much describing a fight.
All authors should write what their readers like best;
But authors are selfish, yes—even the best
And you are an author!
MYSELF: Alack, that is true,
And, among other things, I'm the author of you.
GILL: Then, being my author, it's plain as can be
That you are to blame if I'm naughty—not me.
But, father, our Geste, though quite corking in places,
Has too many fights and too little embraces.
You've made all our lovers so frightfully slow,
You ought to have married them pages ago.
The books that are nicest are always the sort
That, when you have read them, seem always too short!
If you make all your readers impatient like me,
They'll buy none of your books—and then where shall we be?
All people like reading of love when they can,
So write them a lot, father, that is the plan.
Go on to the love, then, for every one's sake,
And end with a wedding—
MYSELF: Your counsel I 'll take.
I can woo them and wed them in less than no time,
I can do it in prose, in blank verse, or in rhyme;
But since, my dear, you are for speed,
To end our Geste I will proceed.
In many ways it may be done,
As I have told you—here is one:
A short two years have elapsed and we find our hero Jocelyn tenderly playing with a golden-haired prattler, his beloved son and heir, while his beautiful spouse Yolande busied with her needle, smiles through happy tears.
GILL: O, hush, father! Of course, that is simply absurd!
Such terrible piffle—
MYSELF: I object to that word!
GILL: Well, then, please try a little verse.
MYSELF: With pleasure:
“My own at last!” Duke Joc'lyn fondly cried,
And kissed Yolande, his blooming, blushing bride.
“My own!” he sighed. “My own—my very own!”
“Thine, love!” she murmured. “Thine and thine alone,
Thy very own for days and months and years—”
GILL: O, stop! I think that's even worse!
MYSELF: Beyond measure.
Then here's a style may be admired
Since brevity is so desired:
So he married her and she married him,
and everybody married each other
and lived happy ever after.
Or again, and thus, my daughter,
Versified it may be shorter:
So all was marriage, joy and laughter,
And each lived happy ever after.
Or:
If for High Romance you sigh,
Here's Romance that's over high:
Shy summer swooned to autumn's sun-burned arms,
Swoon, summer, swoon!
While roses bloomed and blushing sighed their pain,
Blush, roses, blush!
Filling the world with perfume languorous,
Sighing forth their souls in fragrant amorousness;
And fair Yolande, amid these bloomful languors,
Blushing as they, as languorous, as sweet,
Sighed in the arms that passioned her around:
O Jocelyn, O lord of my delight,
See how—
GILL: Stop, father, stop, I beg of you.
Such awful stuff will never do,
I suppose you must finish it in your own way—
MYSELF: I suppose that I shall, child, that is—if I may.
GILL: But father, wait—I must insist
Whatever else you do
It's time that somebody was kissed
It doesn't matter who—
I mean either Yolande the Fair
Or else the Duchess—I don't care.
MYSELF: In these next two Fyttes both shall kiss
And be well kissed, I promise this.
Two Fyttes of kisses I will make
One after t' other, for your sake.
Two Fyttes of love I will invent
And make them both quite different,
Which is a trying matter rather
And difficult for any father—
But then, as well you know, my Gillian,
You have a father in a million;
And Oh, methinks 'tis very plain
You ne'er shall meet his like again.
FYTTE 11
How Pertinax fell out with Robin and with Friar, Yet, in that very hour, came by his heart's desire.
The sinking sun had set the West aflame, When our three riders to the wild-wood came, Where a small wind 'mid sun-kissed branches played, And deep'ning shadows a soft twilight made; Where, save for leafy stirrings, all was still, Lulled by the murmur of a bubbling rill That flowed o'ershadowed by a mighty oak, Its massy bole deep-cleft by lightning stroke. Here Robin checked his steed. “Good friends,” quoth he,
My daughter Gillian suggesteth:
Gill: That's rather good,
But, still, I should
In prose prefer the rest;
For if this fytte
Has love in it,
Prose is for love the best.
All ord'nary lovers, as every one knows,
Make love to each other much better in prose.
If, at last, our Sir Pertinax means to propose,
Why then—just to please me,
Father, prose let it be.
Myself: Very well, I agree!
Then said Robin, quoth he:
“Good friends, here are we safe!” And, checking his steed within this
pleasant shade, he dismounted.
“Safe, quotha?” said Sir Pertinax, scowling back over shoulder. “Not so! Surely we are close pursued—hark! Yonder be horsemen riding at speed—ha, we are beset!”