Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/45

 wall, beam, and rafter; and restored to the ladies the bones of their slain husbands that they might do their obsequies as was then wonted. But it were all too long to describe the great clamour and wailing that the ladies made when the bodies were burned, or the great honour which Theseus did them when they parted from him; to tell shortly is mine intent. When thus the worthy duke had slain Creon and won the city of Thebes, he took his rest for the night in that field and then dealt with all the country as he would.

After the battle, the pillagers were busy searching in the heaps of corpses and stripping them of their harness and garments, and so befell that they found in the pile, gashed through with many a grievous bloody wound, two young knights lying hard by each other, both in one coat-of-arms full richly wrought, not fully alive nor quite dead. By their coat-armour and their equipment, the heralds knew them well among the rest as of the blood royal of Thebes and born of two sisters. Out of the heap the pillagers drew them, and gently carried them to the tent of Theseus, who full soon sent them to Athens, to dwell in prison perpetually; he would have no ransom. And when this worthy duke had done thus, he took his host and anon rode homeward, crowned with laurel as a victor. And there he liveth in honour and joy all his life; what needeth more words? And in a tower in anguish and woe dwell this Palamon and eke Arcite forevermore, no gold may free them.

Thus passed day by day and year after year till it befell once on a May-morrow that Emily, that was fairer to look upon than the lily is upon its green stalk, and fresher than the May with its new flowers—for her bloom was like the rose, I know not which was the fairer of the two—ere it were day, as was her wont,