Yet I do you mo to wit
The geese y-roasted on the spit
Fleeth to that abbey, Got it wot
And gredeth: Geese all hot, all hot!
The land of Cockayne is a burlesque Paradise ‘far in the sea by West of Spain’.
There beth rivers great and fine
Of oil, milk, honey and wine;
Water serveth there to no thing,
But to sight and to washing.
This piece, and Reynard and Isengrim (The Fox and the Wolf), and others, show that fairly early, and before the French language had given way to English as the proper speech for good society, there was some talent in English authors for light verse, narrative or descriptive, for humorous stories, and for satire. The English short couplets of those days—of the time of Henry III and Edward I—are at no disadvantage as compared with the French. Anything can be expressed in that familiar verse which is possible in French—anything, except the finer shades of sentiment, for which as yet the English have no mind, and which must wait for the authors of the Confessio Amantis and the Book of the Duchess Blanche.