Page:Romance of the Rose (Ellis), volume 2.pdf/81

To drown thee in, or dizzy height
From whence thou may’st take headlong flight?
Were not swift exit better far
Than all thy happiness to mar
By wedlock’s chains?
Phoroneus, who
The use of laws first taught unto
The Greeks, when lying on his bed
A-dying, to his brother said.
The young Leontius: Brother dear.
Calm were my death could I but hear9170
Thee promise that thou ne’er wilt take
A wife—this vow I prithee make.
And when Leontius sought the why,
He spake him thus wise: Verily,
Cruel experience all have found
Whose feet within the snares are bound
Of marriage, and if thou a wife
Shouldst take—alas! woe worth thy life!

Abelard and Heloïse Likewise did Heloïse entreat
(The abbess of the Paraclete)9180
Her lover Peter Abelard,
That he would utterly discard
All thought of marriage from his mind.

This lady, noble and refined,
Of genius bright and learning great,
Loving, and loved with passionate
Strong love, implored him not to wed,
And many a well-wrought reason sped
To him in letters, where she showed
That hard and troublous is the code9190