Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/336

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OF THREE KINGS.


APPLICATION.

My beloved, the grove is the world, wherein are many trees, pleasant indeed to the eye, but putting forth only mortal sins. With these, man loads himself. The three men, who brought assistance, are the devil, the world, and the flesh: the pit is hell.—Again, the crow is the devil; the nest the heart; which he too frequently inhabits. The pounded glass is the remembrance of our latter end: the tree is the soul, and the bark is the human body.





TALE XLVII.

OF THREE KINGS.

A Danish king had the greatest reverence for the three Eastern potentates (45) whom