#  Charles d'Orleans 

 



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## The text is lightly glossed; see the glossary in the Riverside Chaucer for words not glossed here.


## Against the Coming of May

SortAgains the coming of May   
That is ful of lustyness,   
Let us leve al hevynesse,  
As fer as we can or may.   
  
Now is the time of mirth and play;   
Winter with his idelness   
Is discomfit, as I guess,  
And redy to flee away.   
Agains the coming &c.   
  
Wherfore, ladies, I you pray   
That ye take in you gladness   
And do all your business   
To be mery night and day.   
Agains the coming &c.   
  
  
  
## "Go forth my heart."

  
  
Go forth, my hert, with my lady;   
Loke that we spare no business   
To serve her with such lowliness,   
That ye get her grace and mercy.   
  
Pray her of times prively   
That she keep trewly her promise   
Go forth &c.   
  
I must as a hertless body   
Abide alone in hevyness,   
And ye shal do wel with your maistress   
In plesans glad and mery.  
Go forth &c.   


  
  
**leave**  
  
  
  
  
**defeated**  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
**pleasure**  
  
  
  






Adapted and lightly glossed for beginning readers of Middle English from the edition of H.N. MacCracken, PMLA 16 (1899), pp. 142ff.   
  
See the edition by Eleanor P. Hammond, *English Verse from Chaucer to Surrey*(Duke U.P., 1927, 214-232 (with intro. and excellent notes) \[Widener 10494.225.5\].