Classic Poem

6.

Why hold ye silence in one house
more than another,
sith men ought over all to speake the good
and leave the evill?
Why eat you flesh in one house
more than in another,
if your rule and your order be perfect,
and the patron that made it?

7.

Why get ye your dispensations
to have it more easie?
Certes either it seemeth
that yee be unperfect,
or he that made it so hard,
that ye may not hold it.
And siker, if ye hold not
the rule of your patrons,
ye be not then her freers,
and so ye lie upon your selves.

8.

Why make you as dede men,
when yee be professed,
and yet ye be not dede,
but more quicke beggars than you were before?
And it seemeth evil a dede man
to go about and beg.

9.

Why will ye not suffer
your novises hear
your councels in your chapter house,
ere that they have ben professed,
if your councels been true
and after Gods law?

10.

Why make yee so costly houses
to dwell in, sith Christ did not so,
and dede men should have but graves,
as falleth it to dede men?
And yet ye have more courts
than many lords of England;
for ye now wenden throgh the realme,
and ech night will lig
in your own courts,
and so mow but right few lords doe.