YOUNG MAN. This ring then I give you as a token sure,
Whereby our love shall always endure.
YOUNG WOMAN. With a pure pretence your pledge I take gladly,
For a sign of our love, faith, and fidelity.
YOUNG MAN. Now I am safe, now I am glad,
Now I do live, now I do reign;
Methought till now I was too sad,
Wherefore, sadness, fly hence again!
Away with those words which my father brought out!
Away with his sageness and exhortation!
He could not make me his fool or his lout,
And put me besides this delectation.
Did he judge that I would go to the school,
And might my time spend after this sort?
I am not his calf,[332] nor yet his fool;
This virgin I kiss is my comfort!
YOUNG WOMAN. Well then, I pray you, let us be married,
For methink from it we have long tarried.
YOUNG MAN. Agreed, my sweeting, it shall be then done,
Since that thy good-will I have gotten and won.
YOUNG WOMAN. There would this day be very good cheer,
That every one his belly may fill,
And three or four minstrels would be here,
That none in the house sit idle or still.
YOUNG MAN. Take ye no thought for abundance of meat,
That should be spent at our bridal,
For there shall be enough for all men to eat,
And minstrels besides thereto shall not fail.
The cooks, I dare say, a good while agone,
With such kind of flesh as I did them tell,
Are from the market both come home,
Or else, my own coney, they do not well.
I knew, before that I come to this place,
We should be married together this day,
Which caused me then forthwith in this case
To send for victuals, ere I came away.
YOUNG WOMAN. Wherefore then (I pray ye) shall we go to our inn,
And look that everything be made ready?
Or else all is not worth a brass pin,[333]
Such haste is required in matrimony.
YOUNG MAN. I think six o'clock it is not much past,
But yet to the priest we will make haste,
That according to custom we may be both coupled,
And with a strong knot for ever bound fast:
Yet, ere I depart, some song I will sing,
To the intent to declare my joy without fear,
And in the meantime you may, my sweeting,
Rest yourself in this little chair.