Chief among these are the difficult but exquisite rondel, "Now welcom Somer with thy sonne softe," which closes the "Parliament of Fowls," and the ballad, "Flee fro the prees," which has been already quoted.

The head and sourse of all your Sonnes distemper.

O sonnes leef, O Joves doughter dere, Plesaunce of love, O goodly debonaire, In gentil hertes ay redy to repaire!

She's my sonnes love.

For so sometimes did Phaeton my sonne Request a thing whereby he was vndone; He lost his life through craving it, and I Through graunting it lost him, my sonne, thereby.

Also bezonde that flomme, more upward to the desertes, is a gret pleyn alle gravelly betwene the mountaynes: and in that playn, every day at the sonne risynge, begynnen to growe smale trees; and thei growen til mydday, berynge frute: but no man dar taken of that frute; for it is a thing of fayrye.

For illustration of the last stanza, see Chaucer's Prologue to 'The Legend of Good Women'. 'As I seyde erst, whanne comen is the May, That in my bed ther daweth me no day, That I nam uppe and walkyng in the mede, To seen this floure agein the sonne sprede, Whan it up rysith erly by the morwe;

Thus, Phoebus, thus it is; if thou be hee That art pretended in thy pedegree, If sonne thou be to Iove, as thou doest fame, And chalengest that tytle not in vaine, Now heer bewray some signe of godhead than, And chaunge me straight from shape of mayd to man.

Agesilaus riding upon a rude, or cock-horse as they terme it, played with his sonne beeing but a boy: and when a certayn man passing by sawe him so doe and laughed there withall, Agesilaus sayde thus, Now hold thy peace and say nothing; but when thou art a father I doubt not thou wilt doe as fathers should doe with their children.

And in the gardin at the sonne uprist She walketh up and doun wher as hire list.