PLA ce bo! |
Who is there, who? |
Di le xi! |
Dame Margery, |
Fa, re, my, my. |
Wherefore and why, why? |
For the soul of Philip Sparrow |
That was late slain at Carrow, |
Among the Nunnės Black. |
For that sweet soulės sake, |
And for all sparrows’ souls, |
Set in our bead-rolls, |
Pater noster qui, |
With an Ave Mari, |
And with the corner of a Creed, |
The more shall be your meed.
|
When I remember again |
How my Philip was slain, |
Never half the pain |
Was between you twain, |
Pyramus and Thisbe, |
As then befell to me. |
I wept and I wailed, |
The tearės down hailed, |
But nothing it availed |
To call Philip again |
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.
|
Gib, I say, our cat, |
Worried her on that |
Which I lovèd best. |
It cannot be exprest |
My sorrowful heaviness, |
But all without redress! |
For within that stound, |
Half slumbering, in a sound |
I fell down to the ground.
|
Unneth I cast mine eyes |
Toward the cloudy skies. |
But when I did behold |
My sparrow dead and cold, |
No creature but that would |
Have ruèd upon me |
To behold and see |
What heaviness did me pang: |
Wherewith my hands I wrang, |
That my sinews cracked, |
As though I had been racked, |
So pained and so strained |
That no life wellnigh remained.
|
I sighed and I sobbed, |
For that I was robbed |
Of my sparrow’s life. |
O maiden, widow, and wife, |
Of what estate ye be, |
Of high or low degree, |
Great sorrow then ye might see, |
And learn to weep at me! |
Such pains did me fret |
That mine heart did beat, |
My visage pale and dead, |
Wan, and blue as lead: |
The pangs of hateful death |
Wellnigh had stopped my breath.
* |
Like Andromach, Hector’s wife, |
Was weary of her life, |
When she had lost her joy, |
Noble Hector of Troy; |
In like manner alsó |
Increaseth my deadly woe, |
For my sparrow is go.
|
It was so pretty a fool, |
It would sit on a stool, |
And learned after my school |
For to keep his cut, |
With ‘Philip, keep your cut!’
|
It had a velvet cap, |
And would sit upon my lap |
And seek after small worms, |
And sometime white bread-crumbs; |
And many times and oft |
Between my breastės soft |
It would lie and rest; |
It was proper and prest.
|
Sometime he would gasp |
When he saw a wasp; |
A fly or a gnat, |
He would fly at that; |
And prettily he would pant |
When he saw an ant. |
Lord, how he would pry |
After the butterfly! |
Lord, how he would hop |
After the gressop! |
And when I said, ‘Phip, Phip!’ |
Then he would leap and skip, |
And take me by the lip. |
Alas, it will me slo |
That Philip is gone me fro!
|
Si in i qui ta tes |
Alas, I was evil at ease! |
Di pro fun dis cla ma vi, |
When I saw my sparrow die! |
|
Norfolk Poems |
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