Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/218

 he would come again within a little while, and eke reason would that he must go for his honour, as oft it happeth, so that I made virtue of necessity, and took it well, sith it must be so. As I best might I hid my sorrow from him—Saint John be my witness!—and took him by the hand, and said to him thus: 'Lo! I am all yours; be such as I have been to you, and shall ever be.' It needeth not repeat what he answered. Who can say better than he? Who can do worse? When he hath said all things well, then he hath done. I have heard it said: 'He that shall eat with a fiend needeth a full long spoon therefor.' So at last he must fare on his way, and forth he flyeth till he came where he list. When he thought best to abide, I trow he had in remembrance the text that 'all things, repairing to their kind, rejoice.' Thus men say, methinketh. Men of their own proper nature love newfangledness, as do birds that men feed in cages. For though thou care for them night and day, and strew their cage fair and soft as down, and give them sugar and milk, bread and honey, yet right so soon as the door is raised, they will spurn down their cup with their feet and away to the wood and eat worms. So newfangled be they of diet, and of very nature love novelties, that no gentleness of blood may bind them. So alas the day! fared this tercelet. Though he was gentle-born, fresh and blithe, and goodly for to see, and humble and generous, yet on a time he saw a kite flying, and suddenly he so loved this kite that all his love is clean gone from me, and in this manner he hath broken his troth. Thus the kite hath my love in her service, and I am lorn without remedy."

With that word this falcon gan wail and swooned again in Canacee's bosom.

Great was the lament for the falcon's harm that Canacee made