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