Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Library MS 2006, fols. 390-91. Facsimile in Manuscript Pepys 2006, intro. A. S. G. Edwards, Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Vol. VI (Norman: Pilgrim Books); and The Minor Poems, ed. George B. Pace and Alfred David, Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Vol. V (Norman: Univerity of Oklahoma Press, 1982): 171-78.
1] Attributed to Chaucer in its first printing and usually entitled "Merciles Beaute," after a 17th-century MS copy of the second, and earlier text.yen two: "two yen" in the MS, but the refrain gives this, the metrically correct reading. Translated into modern English,
Your two eyes will slay me suddenly. I cannot endure their beauty So deeply does it wound my eager heart.
And unless your word will heal, without delay, My heart's wound while it is new ...
On my oath, I tell you faithfully That you're the queen of my life and death, And in my dying will that truth be seen.
So has your beauty driven pity from your heart That there's no good in me complaining, So does disdain in his chain bind your mercy.
Just in this way you've paid for my innocent death, I'm telling you the truth, I don't need to pretend.
Alas, how nature has drawn with compasses In you such great beauty that no man may find Mercy, even though he dies in pain.
Because I've escaped so plump from love, I don't expect to be in his lean prison. Being free, I don't give a pea for him.
He may reply and say this and that, I don't care, I'm saying what I think.
Love has struck my name from his slate, And he is stricken utterly from my books. For evermore there is no other way.