JOHN SKELTON
1460 - 1529
----------------------------------------------------------------------- Philip Sparrow Pla ce bo
Who is there? Who?
Di le xi,
Dame Margery.
Fa, re, mi, mi,
Wherefore and why, why?
For the soul of Philip Sparrow,
That was late slain at Carow
Among the Nunnes Blake,
For that sweet soul's sake
And for all the sparrows' souls
Set in our bedrolls,
Pater noster qui
With an Ave Mari,
And with the corner of a Creed,
The more shall be your meed.
When I remember again
How my Philip was slain,
Never half the pain
Was between you twain,
Pyramus and Thisbe,
As then befell to me:
I wept and I wailed,
The tears down hailed,
But nothing is availed
To call Philip again,
Whom Gib, our cat, hath slain.
Gib, I say, our cat
Worrowed her on that
Which I loved best.
It cannot be expressed
My sorrowful heaviness,
But all without redress;
For within that stound,
Half slumb'ring, in a swound,
I fell down to the ground.
Unneth I cast mine eyes
Toward the cloudy skies,
But when I did behold
My sparrow dead and cold,
No creature but that wold
Have rued upon me,
To behold and see
What heaviness did me pang;
Wherewith my hands I wrang,
That my sinews cracked
As though I had been racked;
So pained and so strained
That no life well-nigh remained.
I sighed and I sobbed
For that I was robbed
Of my sparrow's life.
O maiden, widow, and wife,
Of what estate ye be,
Of high or low degree,
Great sorrow then ye might see,
And learn to weep at me!
Such pains did me fret
That mine heart did beat,
My visage pale as lead,
The pangs of hateful death
Well-nigh stopped my breath.
Heu, heu, me,
That I am woe ...
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