Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/110

 perch, when I feel your soft side, I am so full of joy and bliss, that I defy both dream and vision."

With that word, he flew down from the rafter, and with a "chuck" gan to call them, for he had found a grain of corn that lay in the yard. Royal he was ; afraid no more ; he looketh as it were a grim lion. Up and down he roameth upon his toes, for he deigneth not to set his foot to the ground. When he hath come upon a kernel, he chucketh and then to him run all his wives. Thus royal as a prince in his hall I leave this Chaunticleer in his feeding-ground, and hereafter I will tell what befell him.

When the month in which the world began—the month called March in which God created Adam—was completed, and when there had passed also, since March began, two and thirty days, it befell that Chaunticleer, walking in all his pride with his seven wives, cast up his eyes to the bright sun, that had voyaged in the sign of Taurus one and twenty degrees and somewhat farther, and knew by no other lore than nature that it was prime of day, and crew with blissful voice.

"The sun," he said, "is clomb up on heaven one and forty degrees and more in sooth. Madame Pertelote, bliss of my world, hark to these blissful birds how they sing, and see the fresh flowers how they spring. Full is my heart of revelry and delight."

But suddenly a sorrowful chance befell him, for the latter end of joy ever is woe. God wot, in this world, joy is soon passed away; and the fairest-enditing rhetorician might safely write it down in a chronicle for a sovereignly notable thing. Now every wise man let him hearken to me. This story, I vow, is as true as the book of Launcelot de Lake, which women hold in great reverence. Now will I turn again to my matter.