We’re like two dogs in battle on their own; They fought all day but neither got the bone, There came a kite above them, nothing loth, And while they … - Geoffrey Chaucer

"Full is my heart of revelry and grace." But suddenly he fell in grievous case; For ever the latter end of joy is woe. God knows that worldly joys do swiftly go; And if a rhetorician could but write, He in some chronicle might well indite And mark it down as sovereign in degree.

When that Aprille with his shoures sote.
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertue engendred is the flour.

The Wife of Bath A good Wife was there from Bath. She was somewhat deaf, and that was a pity. Of cloth-making had she such a skill that she surpassed even the weavers of Ypres and of Ghent. In all the Parish there was no Wife who dared precede her to the offering at Mass; and, if perchance one did, it was certain so wrathful was she that she forgot all thoughts of charity.