Sir Eger said, ‘If it be so,
Then wot I well I must forgo
Love-liking, and manhood, all clean!’
The water rush’d out of his een!
Sir Gray-Steel is killed:
Gray-Steel into his death thus thraws[26]
He walters[27] and the grass up draws;
*******
A little while then lay he still
(Friends that him saw, liked full ill)
And bled into his armour bright.
The abode of Chaucer’s Reeve, or Steward, in the Canterbury Tales, is painted in two lines, which nobody ever wished longer:
His wonning[28] was full fair upon an heath,
With greeny trees yshadowed was his place.
Every one knows the words of Lear, ‘most matter-of-fact, most melancholy.’
Pray, do not mock me;
I am a very foolish fond old man,
Fourscore and upwards:
Not an hour more, nor less; and, to deal plainly
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
It is thus, by exquisite pertinence, melody, and the implied power of writing with exuberance, if need be, that beauty and truth become identical in poetry, and that pleasure, or at the very worst, a balm in our tears, is drawn out of pain.