Page:The Canterbury tales of Geoffrey Chaucer.djvu/84

 that serveth you, and will till he die. And if ye shall ever be a wife, forget not Palamon the gentle."

And with that word his speech gan fail. From his feet up to his breast was come the cold of death that descended upon him, and in his two arms the vital strength is lost and gone. The intellect that dwelt in his sick and sore heart gan fade; his sight grew dusky and his breath failed. But still he cast his eye upon his lady; his last word was "Emily, your love!" His spirit changed house and went whither, sith I never came thence, I cannot tell. Therefore I stint, I am not one of the divines, of souls I find naught in this record, and I list not give their opinions of them, though they write where they dwell. Arcite is cold, and may Mars guide his soul! Now will I speak forth of the others.

Emily shrieked and Palamon wept, and Theseus anon took his sister swooning and bore her from the corpse. What helpeth it to tell all day how she wept both eve and morn? For when their husbands be gone from them, women for the more part sorrow so, or else fall in such sickness that at the last certainly they die. Infinite were the sorrow and the tears for this Theban's death, of old folk and folk of tender age in all the town, for him wept both man and child; in truth there was no such weeping when Hector was brought all freshly slain to Troy. Alas, the pity that there was! scratching of cheeks and rending of hair! "Why wouldst thou die," these women exclaim, "who hadst gold enough, and Emily!" No man might gladden the duke saving Egeus, his old father, that knew this world's transmutation, as he had seen it change back and forth, woe after gladness and joy after woe, and he showed him ensamples thereof. "Right as man never died that had not lived some-