Page:Romance of the Rose (Ellis), volume 1.pdf/157

To me were far more rich reward
Than earth and heaven besides afford.

Evil-Tongue wakes Jealousy Then Evil-Tongue, who loves to spoil
The joys for which fond lovers toil,
(For no more reason than that he
Delights in strife and enmity),
Beheld the kind and friendly deed
Fair-Welcome wrought.
A hateful weed3670
Is he, foul Scolding’s base-born son,
Than whom in all the world is none
Of speech more bitter and severe,
And who his mother was is clear
By his discourse.
He, enviously,
At once began to watch and spy
Fair-Welcome and myself, and said,
The eye he’d give from out his head,
If we betwixt us had not laid
Some cunning plot.
Such noise he made3680
’Gainst Courtesy’s fair son and me,
That lastly waked he Jealousy,
Who from her couch in wild alarm
Sprang up, foreboding grievous harm,
And like a maniac ran to seize
Fair-Welcome, who such sore misease
Felt, that he wished himself, I trow,
Far off as Etampes, Toul, or Meaux.