Classic Poem

Quis consurget mecum adversus malignantes? Aut quis stabit mecum adversus operantes iniquitatem? Nemo, Domine!

W HAT can it avail
To drive forth a snail,
Or to make a sail
Of an herring's tail?
To rhyme or to rail,
To write or to indict,
Either for delight
Or else for despite?
Or book─ùs to compile
Of divers manner style,
Vice to revile
And sin to exile?
To teach or to preach,
As reason will reach?
Say this, and say that,
His head is so fat,
He wotteth never what
Nor whereof he speaketh;
He crieth and he creaketh,
He prieth and he peeketh,
He chides and he chatters,
He prates and he patters,
He clitters and he clatters,
He meddles and he smatters,
He gloses and he flatters;
Or if he speak plain,
Then he lacketh brain,
He is but a fool;
Let him go to school,
On a three-footed stool
That he may down sit,
For he lacketh wit!
And if that he hit
The nail on the head,
It standeth in no stead.
The Devil, they say, is dead
The Devil is dead!

It may well so be,
Or else they would see
Otherwise, and flee
From worldly vanity,
And foul covetousness,
And other wretchedness,
Fickle falseness,
Variableness,
With unstableness.

And if ye stand in doubt
Who brought this rhyme about,
My name is Colin Clout.
I purpose to shake out
All my conning bag,
Like a clerkly hag.
For though my rhyme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rain-beaten,
Rusty and moth-eaten,
If ye take well therewith,
It hath in it some pith.
For, as far as I can see,
It is wrong with each degree:
For the temporality
Accuseth the spirituality;
The spiritual again
Doth grudge and complain
Upon the temporal men:
Thus each of other blother
The one against the other.
Alas, they make me shudder!
For in hugger-mugger
The Church is put in fault;
The prelates ben so haut,
They say, and look so high,
As though they would─ù fly
Above the starry sky.

Laymen say, indeed,
How they take no heed
Their silly sheep to feed,
But pluck away and pull
The fleeces of their wool, —
Unneth they leave a lock
Of wool among their flock!
And as for their conning,
A glumming and a mumming,
And make thereof a jape!
They gasp and they gape
All to have promotion, —
There is their whole devotion:
With money, if it will hap,
To catch the forked cap.
Forsooth they are too lewd
To say so, all beshrewed!

What trow ye they say more
Of the bishops' lore?
How in matters they be raw,
They lumber forth the law,
To hearken Jack and Gill,
When they put up a bill,
And judge it as they will,
For other menn─ùs skill,
Expounding out their clauses,
And leave their own─ù causes.
In their provincial cure
They make but little sure,
And meddle very light
In the Church's right;
But ire and venire ,
And sol-fa so a-la-mi-re,
That the praemunire
Is like to be set afire
In their jurisdictions
Through temporal afflictions.
Men say they have prescriptions
Against spiritual contradictions,
Accounting them as fictions!

And while the heads do this,
The remnant is amiss
Of the clergy all,
Both great and small.
I wot never how they wark,
But thus the people bark,
And surely thus they say:
Bishops, if they may,
Small houses would─ù keep,
Not slumber forth and sleep,
And essay to creep
Within the noble walls
Of the king─ùs halls,
To fat their bodies full,
Their soul─ùs lean and dull,
And have full little care
How evil their sheep fare!

The temporality say plain,
How bishopp─ùs disdain
Sermons for to make,
Or such─ù labour to take.
And, for to say troth,
A great part is for sloth,
But the greatest part
Is they have little art
And right slender conning
Within their head─ùs wonning.
But this reason they take:
How they are able to make
With their gold and treasure
Clerk─ùs out of measure, —
And yet that is a pleasure!
Howbeit some there be
(Almost two or three)
Of that dignity,
Full worshipful clerk─ùs,
As appeareth by their work─ùs,
Like Aaron and Ure,
The wolf from the door
To werrin and to keep
From their ghostly sheep,
And their spiritual lamb─ùs
Sequestered from ramm─ùs
And from the bearded goats
With their hairy coats;
Set nought by gold ne groats, —
Their names if I durst tell!

But they are loth to mell,
And loth to hang the bell
About the catt─ùs neck,
For dread to have a check;
They are fain to play deuz deck!
They are made for the beck!
Howbeit they are good men,
Much hearted like an hen!
Their lessons forgotten they have
That Becket them gave.
Thomas manum mittit ad fortia ,
Spernit damna, spernit opprobria,
Nulla Thomam frangit injuria!
But now every spiritual father,
Men say, they had rather
Spend much of their share
Than be 'cumbered with care.
Spend! nay, nay, but spare!
For let see who that dare
Shoe the mockish mare;
They make her winch and kick,
But it is not worth a leek.
Boldness is to seek
The Church for to defend.
Take me as I intend,
For loth I am to offend
In this that I have penned:
I tell you as men say.
Amend when ye may,
For, usque ad montem Seir ,
Men say ye cannot apeir!
For some say ye hunt in park─ùs,
And hawk on hobby lark─ùs,
And other wanton wark─ùs,
When the night dark─ùs.

What hath laymen to do
The gray goose for to shoe?
Like hound─ùs of hell,
They cry and they yell,
How that ye sell
The grace of the Holy Ghost.
Thus they make their boast
Throughout every coast,
How some of you do eat
In Lenten season flesh meat,
Pheasants, partridge, and cranes;
Men call you, therefore, profanes.
Ye pick no shrimp─ùs nor pranes,
Salt-fish, stock-fish, nor herring,
It is not for your wearing;
Nor in holy Lenten season
Ye will neither beans ne peason,
But ye look to be let loose
To a pig or to a goose;
Your gorg─ù not endewed
Without a capon stewed,
Or a stewed cock,
To know what is o'clock
Under her surfled smock,
And her wanton wood─ùcock!

And how when ye give orders
In your provincial borders,
As at Sitientes ,
Some are insufficientes ,
Some parum sapientes ,
Some nihil intelligentes ,
Some valde negligentes ,
Some nullum sensum habentes ,
But bestial and untaught.
But when they have once caught
Dominus vobiscum by the head
Then run they in every stead,
God wot, with drunken nolls!
Yet take they cure of souls,
And wotteth never what they read,
Paternoster, Ave, nor Creed;
Construe not worth a whistle
Neither Gospel nor Epistle;
Their matins madly said,
Nothing devoutly prayed;
Their learning is so small,
Their primes and hour─ùs fall
And leap out of their lipp─ùs
Like sawdust or dry chipp─ùs!
I speak not now of all,
But the most part in general.
Of such vagabundus
Speaketh totus mundus ;
How some sing Laetabundus
At every al─ù stake,
With, " Welcome, hake and make!"
By the bread that God brake,
I am sorry for your sake.
I speak not of the good wife,
But of their apostles' life.
Cum ipsis vel illis
Qui manent in villis
Est uxor vel ancilla —
Welcome Jack and Jilla!
My pretty Petronilla,
An you will be stilla,
You shall have your willa!
Of such Paternoster pekes
All the world─ù speaks.

In you the fault is supposed,
For that they are not apposed
By just examination
In conning and conversation;
They have none instruction
To make a true construction.
A priest without a letter,
Without his virtue be greater,
Doubtless were much better
Upon him for to take
A mattock or a rake.
Alas, for very shame!
Some cannot decline their name,
Some can scantly read,
And yet he will not dread
For to keep a cure,
And in nothing is sure.
This Dominus vobiscum ,
As wise as Tom-a-Thrum,
A chaplain of trust
Layeth all in the dust!

Thus I, Colin Clout,
As I go about,
And wandering as I walk
I hear the people talk.
Men say, for silver and gold
Mitres are bought and sold;
There shall no clergy appos─ù
A mitre nor a cros─ù,
But a full purse:
A straw for God's curse!
What are they the worse?
For a simoniac
Is but a hermoniac;
And no more ye make
Of simony, men say,
But a child's play.

Over this, the foresaid lay,
Report─ù how the Pope may
An holy anchor call
Out of the ston─ù wall,
And him a bishop make,
If he on him can take
To keep so hard a rule
To ride upon a mule
With gold─ù all betrapped,
In purple and pall belapped;
Some hatted and some capped,
Richly and warm bewrapped,
(God wot to their great pains!)
In rochets of fine Rennes,
White as morrow's milk;
Their tabards of fin─ù silk,
Their stirrups of mixt gold begared:
There may no cost be spared.
Their mul─ùs gold doth eat,
Their neighbours die for meat.

What care they though Gill sweat,
Or Jack of the Noke?
The poor─ù people they yoke
With summons and citations
And excommunications,
About churches and market.
The bishop on his carpet
At home full soft doth sit.
This is a farly fit,
To hear the people jangle,
How warlike they wrangle
Alas, why do ye not handle
And them all to-mangle?
Full falsely on you they lie,
And shamefully you ascry,
And say as untru─ùly
That a butterfly
(A man might say in mock)
Were the weathercock
Of the steeple of Poul─ùs
And thus they hurt their soul─ùs
In slandering you for truth
Alas, it is great ruth!
Some say ye sit in thron─ùs,
Like princes aquilonis ,
And shrine your rotten bones
With pearls and precious stones;
But how the commons groans,
And the people moans
For prest─ùs and for loans
Lent and never paid,
But from day to day delayed,
The commonwealth decayed,
Men say ye are tongue-tied,
And thereof speak nothing
But dissimuling and glosing.
Wherefore men be supposing
That ye give shrewd counsel
Against the common well,
By polling and pillage
In cities and village
By taxing and tollage,
Ye make monks to have the culerage
For covering of an old cottage,
That committed is a college
In the charter of dotage,
Tenure par service de sottage,
And not par service de socage ,
After old─ù seigneurs,
And the learning of Littleton's Tenures .
Ye have so overthwarted,
That good law─ùs are subverted,
And good reason perverted.

Religious men are fain
For to turn again
In secula seculorum,
And to forsake their quorum
And vagabundare per forum ,
And take a fine meritorum ,
Contra regulam morum,
Aut black monachorum ,
Aut canonicorum,
Aut Bernardinorum,
Aut crucifixorum,
And to sing from place to place,
Like apostates.

And the selfsame game
Begun is now with shame
Among the silly nuns.
My lady now she runs,
Dame Sibyl our abbess,
Dame Dorothy and Lady Bess,
Dame Sarah our prioress,
Out of their cloister and choir
With an heavy cheer,
Must cast up their black veils
And set up their fuck-sails,
To catch wind with their ventales —
What, Colin, there thou shales!
Yet thus with ill-hails
The laity rails.

And all the fault they lay
On your precept, and say
Ye do them wrong and no right
To put them thus to flight;
No matins at midnight,
Book and chalice gon─ù quite;
And pluck away the leads
Even over their heads,
And sell away their bells,
And all that they have else!
Thus the people tells,
Rails like rebels,
Redes shrewdly and spells,
And with foundations mells,
And talks like titivels,
How ye brake the dead─ùs wills,
Turn monasteries into water-mills;
Of an abbey ye make a grange
(Your works, they say, are strange)
So that their founders' souls
Have lost their bead─ùrolls,
The money for their masses
Spent among wanton lasses;
The Diriges are forgotten;
Their founders lie there rotten,
But where their soul─ùs dwell,
Therewith I will not mell.
What could the Turk do more
With all his fals─ù lore,
Turk, Saracen, or Jew?
I report me to you,
O merciful Jesu,
Your support and rescue,
My style for to direct,
It may take some effect!
For I abhor to write
How the laity despite
You prelates, that of right
Should be lanterns of light.
Ye live, they say, in delight,
Drowned in deliciis ,
In gloria et divitiis,
In admirabili honore,
In gloria et splendore
Fulgur antis hastae,
Viventes parum caste.
Yet sweet meat hath sour sauce:
For after gloria, laus ,
Christ by cruelty
Was nailed upon a tree;
He paid a bitter pension
For man's redemption;
He drank eisel and gall
To redeem us withal;
But sweet hippocras ye drink,
With, " Let the cat wink!"
Ich wot what each other think.
Howbeit, per assimile ,
Some men think that ye
Shall have penalty
For your iniquity
Nota what I say,
And bear it well away.
If it please not theologues,
It is good for astrologues:
For Ptolemy told me
The sun sometime to be
In Ariete
Ascendant a degree,
When Scorpion descending
Was so then portending
A fatal fall of one
That should sit on a throne,
And rule all things alone.
Your teeth whet on this bone
Amongst you every one,
And let Colin Clout have none
Manner of cause to moan.
Lay salve to your own─ù sore,
For else, as I said before,
After gloria, laus ,
May come a sour─ù sauce.
Sorry therefore am I,
But truth can never lie.

With language thus polluted
Holy Church is bruted
And shamefully confuted
My pen now will I sharp,
And wrest up my harp
With sharp twinking trebles,
Against all such─ù rebels
That labour to confound
And bring the Church to the ground;
As ye may daily see
How the laity
Of one affinity
Consent and agree
Against the Church to be,
And the dignity
Of the bishops' see.

And either ye be too bad,
Or else they are mad
Of this to report.
But, under your support,
Till my dying day
I shall both write and say,
And ye shall do the same,
How they are to blame
You thus to defame.
For it maketh me sad
How that the people are glad
The Church to deprave;
And some there are that rave,
Presuming on their wit,
When there is never a whit
To maintain arguments
Against the sacraments.

Some make epilogation
Of high predestination;
And of recidivation
They make interpretation
Of an awkward fashion;
And of the prescience
Of divine essence;
And what hypostasis
Of Christ's manhood is.
Such logic men will chop,
And in their fury hop,
When the good ale sop
Doth dance in their foretop!
Both─ù women and men,
Such ye may well know and ken
That against priesthood
Their malice spread abroad,
Railing heinously
And disdainously
Of priestly dignities,
With their malignities.

And some have a smack
Of Luther's sack,
And a burning spark
Of Luther's wark,
And are somewhat suspect.
In Luther's sect;
And some of them bark,
Clatter and carp
Of that heresiarch
Called Wicliffista,
The devilish dogmatista;
And some be Hussians,
And some be Arians,
And some be Pelagians,
And make much variance
Between the clergy
And the temporalty,
How the Church hath too mickle,
And they have too little,
And bring in materialities
And qualified qualities
Of pluralities,
Of trialities,
And of tot quots
They commune like sots,
As cometh to their lots;
Of prebendaries and deans,
How some of them gleans
And gathereth up the store
For to catch more and more;
Of parsons and vicaries
They make many outcries —
They cannot keep their wives
From them for their lives!
And thus the losels strives,
And lewdly says, by Christ,
Against the silly priest.
Alas, and wellaway,
What ails them thus to say?
They might be better advised
Than to be so disguised!
But they have enterprised,
And shamefully surmised,
How prelacy is sold and bought,
And come up of nought;
And where the prelates be
Come of low degree,
And set in majesty
And spiritual dignity,
Farewell benignity,
Farewell simplicity,
Farewell humility,
Farewell good charity!

Ye are so puffed with pride,
That no man may abide
Your high and lordly looks:
Ye cast up then your books,
And virtue is forgotten;
For then ye will be wroken
Ofevery light quarrel,
And call a lord a javel,
A knight a knave ye make;
Ye boast, ye face, ye crake,
And upon you ye take
To rule both king and kaiser;
An if ye may have leisure,
Ye will bring all to nought,
And that is all your thought!
For the lord─ùs temporal,
Their rule is very small,
Almost nothing at all.
Men say how ye appal
The noble blood royall.
In earnest and in game,
Ye are the less to blame,
For lords of noble blood,
If they well understood
How conning might them advance,
They would pipe you another dance.
But noblemen born
To learn they have scorn,
But hunt and blow an horn,
Leap over lak─ùs and dykes,
Set nothing by politics.
Therefore ye keep them base,
And mock them to their face.
This is a piteous case!
To you that be on the wheel
Great lords must crouch and kneel,
And break their hose at the knee,
As daily men may see,
And to remembrance call.
Fortune so turneth the ball
And ruleth so over all,
That honour hath a great fall.

Shall I tell you more? yea, shall
I am loth to tell all;
But the commonalty you call
Idols of Babylon,
De Terra Zabulon,
De Terra Neptalim;
For ye love to go trim,
Brought up of poor estate,
With pride inordinate,
Suddenly upstart
From the dung-cart,
The mattock and the shule,
To reign and to rule;
And have no grace to think
How ye were wont to drink
Of a leather bottle
With a knavish stopple,
When mammocks was your meat,
With mouldy bread to eat;
Ye could none other get
To chew and to gnaw,
To fill therewith your maw;
Lodging in fair─ù straw,
Couching your drowsy heads
Sometime in lousy beds.
Alas, this is out of mind!
Ye grow now out of kind.
Many one ye have untwined,
And made the commons blind.
But qui se existimat stare ,
Let him well bewar─ù
Lest that his foot slip,
And have such a trip,
And fall in such decay,
That all the world may say,
" Come down, in the devil way!"

Yet, over all that,
Of bishops they chat,
That though ye round your hair
An inch above your ear,
And have aur es patentes
And parum intendentes ,
And your tonsures be cropped,
Your ears they be stopped!
For Master Adulator ,
And Doctor Assentator ,
And Blandior blandiris ,
With Mentior mentiris ,
They follow your desir─ùs,
And so they blear your eye,
That ye cannot espy
How the male doth wry.

Alas, for God's will,
Why sit ye, prelates, still
And suffer all this ill?
Ye bishops of estates
Should open the broad gates
Of your spiritual charge,
And come forth at large,
Like lanterns of light,
In the people's sight,
In pulpits authentic,
For the weal public
Of priesthood in this case;
And always to chase
Such manner of schismatics
And half heretics,
That would intoxicate,
That would coinquinate,
That would contaminate,
And that would violate,
And that would derogate,
And that would abrogate
The Church's high estates,
After this manner rates, —
The which should be
Both frank and free,
And have their liberty,
As of antiquity
It was ratified,
And also gratified,
By holy synodals
And bulls papals,
As it is res certa
Contained in Magna Charta .

But Master Damyan,
Or some other man,
That clerkly is and can
Well scripture expound
And his text─ùs ground,
His benefice worth ten pound,
Or scant worth twenty mark,
And yet a noble clerk,
He must do this wark;
As I know a part,
Some masters of art,
Some doctors of law,
Some learned in other saw,
As in divinity,
That hath no dignity
But the poor degree
Of the university;
Or else friar Frederic,
Or else friar Dominic,
Or friar Hugulinus,
Or friar Augustinus,
Or friar Carmelus,
That ghostly can heal us;
Or else if we may
Get a friar gray,
Or else of the order
Upon Greenwich border,
Called Observance,
Or a friar of France;
Or else the poor Scot,
It must come to his lot
To shoot forth his shot;
Or of Babwell beside Bury,
To postel upon a Kyrie ,
That would it should be noted
How scripture should be quoted,
And so clerkly promoted;
And yet the friar doted.

But men say your authority,
And your noble see,
And your dignity,
Should be imprinted better
Than all the friars' letter;
For if ye would take pain
To preach a word or twain,
Though it were never so plain,
With clauses two or three,
So as they might be
Compendiously conveyed,
These words should be more weighed,
And better perceived,
And thankfullerly received,
And better should remain
Among the people plain,
That would your words retain
And rehears─ù them again,
Than a thousand thousand other
That blabber, bark, and blother,
And make a Welshman's hose
Of the text and of the glose.

For protestation made,
That I will not wade
Farther in this brook,
Nor farther for to look
In devising of this book,
But answer that I may
For myself alway,
Either analogice
Or else categorice ,
So that in divinity
Doctors that learned be,
Nor bachelors of that faculty
That hath taken degree
In the university,
Shall not be object at by me.

But Doctor Bullatus,
Parum litteratus,
Dominus doctoratus
At the Broadgatus,
Doctor Dawpatus,
And bachelor bacheleratus ,
Drunken as a mouse,
At the ale house,
Taketh his pillion and his cap
At the good ale tap,
For lack of good wine;
As wise as Robin swine,
Under a notary's sign
Was made a divine;
As wise as Waltham's calf,
Must preach, a God's half,
In the pulpit solemnly —
More meet in the pillory!
For, by Saint Hilary,
He can nothing smatter
Of logic nor school matter,
Neither syllogisare ,
Nor enthymemare ,
Nor knoweth his elench─ùs,
Nor his predicament─ùs;
And yet he will mell
To amend the Gospel,
And will preach and tell
What they do in hell;
And he dare not well neven
What they do in heaven,
Nor how far Temple Bar is
From the Seven Starr─ùs.

Now will I go
And tell of other mo,
Semper protestando
De non impugnando
The four orders of friars,
Though some of them be liars;
As limiters at large
Will charge and discharge;
As many a friar, God wote,
Preaches for his groat,
Flattering for a new coat
And for to have his fees;
Some to gather cheese;
Loth they are to lese
Either corn or malt;
Sometime meal and salt,
Sometime a bacon flick,
That is three fingers thick
Of lard─ù and of grease,
Their convent to increase.

I put you out of doubt,
This cannot be brought about
But they their tongu─ùs file,
And make a pleasant style
To Margery and to Maud,
How they have no fraud;
And sometime they provoke
Both Gill and Jack at Noke
Their duties to withdraw,
That they ought by law
Their curates to content
In open time and Lent.
God wot, they take great pain
To flatter and to feign;
But it is an old-said saw,
That need hath no law.
Some walk about in melottes,
In gray russet and hairy coats;
Some will neither gold nor groats;
Some pluck a partridge in remotes,
And by the bars of her tail
Will know a raven from a rail,
A quail, the rail, and the old raven!
Sed libera nos a malo! Amen.
And by Dudum , their Clementine,
Against curates they repine;
And say properly they are sacerdotes ,
To shrive, assoil, and release
Dame Margery's soul out of hell.
But when the friar fell in the well,
He could not sing himself thereout
But by the help of Christian Clout.
Another Clementine also,
How friar Fabian, with other mo,
Exivit de Paradiso;
When they again thither shall come,
De hoc petimus consilium:
And through all the world they go
With Dirige and Placebo .

But now my mind ye understand,
For they must take in hand
To preach, and to withstand
All manner of objections;
For bishops have protections,
They say, to do corrections,
But they have no affections
To take the said directions.
In such manner of cases,
Men say, they bear no faces
To occupy such places,
To sow the seed of graces:
Their heart─ùs are so fainted,
And they be so attainted
With covetise and ambition,
And other superstition,
That they be deaf and dumb,
And play silence and glum,
Can say nothing but " Mum!"

They occupy them so
With singing Placebo ,
They will no farther go:
They had liefer to please,
And take their worldly ease,
Than to take on hand
Worshipfully to withstand
Such temporal war and bate
As now is made of late
Against Holy Church estate,
Or to maintain good quarrels.
The lay men call them barrels
Full of gluttony
And of hypocrisy,
That counterfeits and paints
As they were very saints.
In matters that them like
They shew them politic,
Pretending gravity
And signiority,
With all solemnity,
For their indemnity!
For they will have no loss
Of a penny nor of a cross
Of their predial lands,
That cometh to their hands,
And as far as they dare set,
All is fish that cometh to net.
Building royally
Their mansions curiously,
With turrets and with towers,
With hall─ùs and with bowers,
Stretching to the stars,
With glass windows and bars;
Hanging about the wall─ùs
Cloths of gold and pall─ùs,
Arras of rich array,
Fresh as flowers in May;
With dame Diana naked;
How lusty Venus qaked,
And how Cupid shaked
His dart, and bent his bow
For to shoot a crow
At her tirly tirlow;
And how Paris of Troy
Danced a lege de moy,
Made lusty sport and joy
With dame Helen the queen;
With such stories bydene
With Triumphs of Caesar,
And of Pompeius' war,
Of renown and of fame,
By them to get a name.
Now all the world─ù stares,
How they ride in goodly chairs,
Conveyed by elephants,
With laureate garlants,
And by unicorn─ùs
With their seemly horn─ùs;
Upon these beast─ùs riding,
Naked boy─ùs striding,
With wanton wenches winking.
Now truly, to my thinking,
That is a speculation
And a meet meditation
For prelates of estate,
Their corage to abate
From worldly wantonness,
Their chambers thus to dress
With such parfitness
And all such holiness!
Howbeit they let down fall
Their churches cathedrall.

Squire, knight, and lord,
Thus the Church remord;
With all temporal people
They run against the steeple,
Thus talking and telling
How some of you are melling,
Yet soft and fair for swelling —
Beware of a quean's yelling.
It is a busy thing
For one man to rule a king
Alone and make reckoning,
To govern over all
And rule a realm royall
By one man's very wit.
Fortune may chance to flit,
And when he weneth to sit,
Yet may he miss the cushion.
For I rede a preposition —
Cum regibus amicare,
Et omnibus dominari,
Et supra te pravare.
Wherefore he hath good ure
That can himself assure
How fortune will endure.
Then let reason you support,
For the commonalty doth report
That they have great wonder
That ye keep them so under;
Yet they marvel so much less,
For ye play so at the chess,
As they suppose and guess,
That some of you but late
Hath played so checkmate
With lords of great estate,
After such a rate,
That they shall mell nor make,
Nor upon them take,
For king's nor kaiser's sake,
But at the pleasure of one
That ruleth the roast alone.

Helas, I say, helas!
How may this come to pass,
That a man shall hear a mass,
And not so hardy on his head
To look on God in form of bread,
But that the parish clerk
Thereupon must hark,
And grant him at his asking
For to see the sacring?

And how may this accord,
No man to our sovereign lord
So hardy to make suit,
Nor yet to execute
His commandment,
Without the assent
Of our president,
Nor to express to his person,
Without your consentation
Grant him his licence
To press to his presence,
Nor to speak to him secretly,
Openly nor privily,
Without this president be by,
Or else his substitute
Whom he will depute?
Neither earl ne duke
Permitted? By saint Luke,
And by sweet saint Mark,
This is a wondrous wark!
That the people talk─ù this,
Somewhat there is amiss.
The Devil cannot stop their mouths,
But they will talk of such uncouths,
All that ever they ken
Against all spiritual men!

Whether it be wrong or right,
Or else for despite,
Or however it hap,
Their tongues thus do clap,
And through such detraction
They put you to your action;
And whether they say truly
As they may abide thereby,
Or else that they do lie,
Ye know better than I!
But now debetis scire ,
And groundly audire ,
In your convenire ,
Of this praemunire,
Or else in the mir─ù
They say they will you cast.
Therefore stand sure and fast!

Stand sure, and take good footing,
And let be all your mooting,
Your gasping and your tooting,
And your partial promoting
Of those that stand in your grace.
But old─ù servants ye chase,
And put them out of their place.
Make ye no murmuration,
Though I write after this fashion;
Though I, Colin Clout,
Among the whol─ù rout
Of you that clerk─ùs be,
Take now upon me
Thus copiously to write,
I do it for no despite
Wherefore take no disdain
At my style rude and plain;
For I rebuke no man
That virtuous is: why then
Wreak ye your anger on me?
For those that virtuous be
Have no cause to say
That I speak out of the way.

Of no good bishop speak I,
Nor good priest I ascry,
Good friar, nor good chanon,
Good nunn─ù, nor good canon,
Good monk─ù, nor good clerk,
Nor yet of no good work.
But my recounting is
Of them that do amiss,
In speaking and rebelling,
In hindering and disavailing
Holy Church, our mother,
One against another.
To use such despiting
Is all my whol─ù writing;
To hinder no man,
As near as I can,
For no man have I named:
Wherefore should I be blamed?
Ye ought to be ashamed,
Against me to be gramed,
And can tell no cause why,
But that I write truly!

Then if any there be
Of high or low degree
Of the spirituality,
Or of the temporality,
That doth think or ween
That his conscience be not clean,
And feeleth himself sick,
Or touched on the quick,
Such grace God them send
Themself─ù to amend, —
For I will not pretend
Any man to offend.

Wherefore, as thinketh me,
Great idiots they be,
And little grace they have,
This treatise to deprave;
Nor will hear no preaching,
Nor no virtuous teaching,
Nor will have no resting
Of any virtuous writing;
Will know none intelligence
To reform their negligence,
But live still out of fashion,
To their own damnation
To do shame they have no shame,
But they would no man should them blame!
They have an evil name,
But yet they will occupy the same!

With them the word of God
Is counted for no rod;
They count it for a railing,
That nothing is availing.
The preachers with evil hailing:
" Shall they daunt us prelates,
That be their primates?
Not so hardy on their pates!
Hark, how the losel prates,
With a wide wesaunt!
Avaunt, sir Guy of Gaunt!
Avaunt, lewd priest, avaunt!
Avaunt, sir doctor Devias!
Prate of thy matins and thy mass,
And let our matters pass!
How darest thou, dawcock, mell?
How darest thou, losel,
Allegate the Gospel
Against us of the council?
Avaunt to the devil of hell!
Take him, Warden of the Fleet,
Set him fast by the feet!
I say, Lieutenant of the Tower,
Make this lurdain for to lour;
Lodge him in Little Ease,
Feed him with beans and peas!
The King's Bench or Marshalsea,
Have him thither by and by!
The villain preacheth openly,
And declareth our villany;
And of our free simpleness,
He says that we are reckeless,
And full of wilfulness,
Shameless and merciless,
Incorrigible and insatiate;
And after this rate
Against us doth prate!

" At Paul─ùs Cross or elsewhere,
Openly at Westminstere,
And Saint Mary Spittle,
They set not by us a whistle!
At the Austin Friars
They count us for liars!
And at Saint Thomas of Akers
They clack of us like crakers,
How we will rule all at will
Without good reason or skill;
And say how that we be
Full of partiality;
And how at a prong
We turn right into wrong,
Delay causes so long
That right no man can fong;
They say many matters be born
By the right of a ram─ùs horn!
Is not this a shameful scorn,
To be teared thus and torn?

" How may we this endure?
Wherefore we make you sure,
Ye preachers shall be yawed;
And some shall be sawed,
As noble Isaias,
The holy prophet, was;
And some of you shall die,
Like holy Jeremy;
Some hanged, some slain,
Some beaten to the brain;
And we will rule and reign,
And our matters maintain,
Who dare say there again,
Or who dare disdain,
At our pleasure and will.
For, be it good or be it ill,
As it is, it shall be still, —
For all master doctor of Civil,
Or of Dominic, or doctor Drivel,
Let him cough, rough, or snivel!
Run God, run Devil,
Run who may run best,
And let take all the rest!
We set not a nutshell
The way to heaven or hell!"

Lo, this is the guise nowadays!
It is to dread, men says,
Lest they be Sadducees,
As they be said sain,
Which determined plain
We should not rise again
At dreadful doom─ùsday.
And so it seemeth they play,
Which hate to be corrected
When they be infected,
Nor will suffer this book
By hook ne by crook
Printed for to be,
For that no man should see
Nor read in any scrolls
Of their drunken nolls,
Nor of their nodipolls,
Nor of their silly souls,
Nor of some witless pates
Of divers great estates,
As well as other men.

Now to withdraw my pen,
And now a while to rest,
Meseemeth it for the best.

The forecastle of my ship
Shall glide, and smoothly slip
Out of the wav─ùs wood
Of the stormy flood;
Shoot anchor, and lie at road,
And sail not far abroad,
Till the coast be clear,
And the lode-star appear.
My ship now will I steer
Toward the port salu
Of our Saviour Jesu,
Such grace that He us send,
To rectify and amend
Things that are amiss,
When that His pleasure is.
Amen!

In opere imperfecto,
In opere semper perfecto,
Et in opere plusquam perfecto!

...

Colinus Cloutus, quanquam mea carmina multis
Sordescunt stultus, sed puevinate sunt rare cultis,
Pue vinatis altisem divino flamine flatis.
Unde mea refert tanto minus, invida quamvis
Lingua nocere parat, quia, quanquam rustica canto,
Undique cantabor tamen et celebrabor ubique,
Inclita dum maneat gens Anglica. Laurus honoris,
Quondam regnorum regina et gloria regum,
Heu, modo marcescit, tabescit, languida torpet!
Ah pudet, ah miser et! vetor hic ego pandere plura
Pro genitu et lacrimis: praestet peto praemia paena.