Classic Poem

Skelton Laureate, Defender, against Master Garnesche, Challenger

Sith ye have me challenged, Master Garnesche,
Rudely reviling me in the king's noble hall,
Such another challenger could no man wish,
But if it were Sir Termagant that tourneyed without nall;
For Sir Frollo de Franko was never half so tall.
But say me now, Sir Satrapas, what authority ye have
In your challenge, Sir Chesten, to call me a knave?

What, have ye kithed you a knight, Sir Douglas the Doughty,
So currishly to beknave me in the king's palace?
Ye strong sturdy stallion, so stern and stouty,
Ye bear ye bold as Barabas, or Sir Terry of Thrace;
Ye girn grimly with your gumm─ùs and with your grisly face!
But say me yet, Sir Satrapas, what authority ye have
In your challenge, Sir Chesten, to call me a knave?

Ye foul, fierce and fell, as Sir Ferumbras the freke,
Sir captain of Catywade, catacumbas of Cayre,
Though ye be lusty as Sir Libius lances to break,
Yet your countenance uncomely, your face is not fair:
For all your proud pranking, your pride may impair.
But say me yet, Sir Satrapas, what authority ye have
In your challenge, Sir Chesten, to call me a knave?

Of Mantrible the Bridge, Malchus the Murrion,
Nor black Balthasar with his basnet rough as a bear,
Nor Lycaon, that loathly lusk, in mine opinion,
Nor no boar so brimly bristled is with hair,
As ye are bristled on the back for all your gay gear.
But say me yet, Sir Satrapas, what authority ye have
In your challenge, Sir Chesten, to call me a knave?

Your wind-shaken shanks, your long loathly legs,
Crooked as a camock, and as a cow calfless,
Brings you out of favour with all female tegs:
That Mistress Punt put you off, it was not all causeless;
At Orwell her haven your anger was lawless.
But say me yet, Sir Satrapas, what authority ye have
In your challenge, Sir Chesten, to call me a knave?

I say, ye solemn Saracen, all black is your ble;
As a glede glowing, your eyen glister as glass,
Rolling in your hollow head, ugly to see;
Your teeth tainted with tawny; your snivelly snout doth pass,
Hooked as an hawk─ùs beak, like Sir Topas.
Boldly bend you to battle, and busk yourself to save:
Challenge yourself for a fool, call me no more knave!

Skelton Laureate, Defender, against Master Garnesche, Challenger, with Greasy, Gorbellied Godfrey

How may I your mockery meekly tolerate,
Your groaning, your grunting, your groining like a swine?
Your pride is all to-peevish, your port importunate:
You manticore, ye malapert, ye can both wince and whine;
Your loathsome lere to look on, like a greased boot doth shine.
Ye capped Cayface copyus, your paltock on your pate,
Though ye prate like proud Pilate, beware yet of checkmate.

Whole is your brow that ye brake with Durandal your own sword;
Why hold ye on your cap, sir, then? your pardon is expired:
Ye hobble very homely before the king's board;
Ye counter umwhile too captiously, and ere ye be desired;
Your moth-eaten mockish manners, they be all to-mired
Ye capped Cayface copyus, your paltock on your pate,
Though ye prate like proud Pilate, beware of checkmate.

O Gabionite of Gabion, why do ye gane and gasp?
Huf a gallant Garnesche, look on your comely corse!
Lusty Garnesche, like a louse, ye jet full like a jasp;
As witless as a wild goose, ye have but small remorse
Me for to challenge that of your challenge maketh so little force.
Ye capped Cayface copyus, your paltock on your pate,
Though ye prate like proud Pilate, beware of checkmate.

Sir Guy, Sir Gawain, Sir Cayus, for and Sir Olivere,
Pyramus, nor Priamus, nor Sir Pyrrus the proud,
In Arthur's ancient act─ùs nowhere is proved your peer;
The fashion of your phys'nomy the devil in a cloud;
Your heart is too haut, ywis, it will not be allowed
Ye capped Cayface copyus, your paltock on your pate,
Though ye prate like proud Pilate, beware of checkmate.

Ye ground you upon Godfrey, that grisly gorgon's face,
Your standard, Sir Olifaunte, against me for to 'splay:
Baile, baile at you both, frantic fools! follow on the chase!
Come Garnesche, come Godfrey, with as many as ye may!
I advise you beware of this war, range you in array.
Ye capped Cayface copyus, your paltock on your pate,
Though ye prate like proud Pilate, beware of checkmate.

Gup, gorbellied Godfrey, gup, Garnesche, gawdy fool!
To tourney or to taunt with me ye are too far to seek:
For these twain whipslovens call for a cuck-stool:
Thou manticore, ye marmoset, garnished like a Greek,
Wrangling, wayward, witless, raw, and nothing meek.
Ye capped Cayface copyus, your paltock on your pate,
Though ye prate like proud Pilate, beware of checkmate.

Mirres vous y,

Look not too high.

Skelton Laureate, Defender, against Lusty Garnesche, Well-beseen Christopher, Challenger

I have your lewd letter received,
And well I have it perceived,
And your skrike I have espied,
That your mad mind contrived.
Saving your usher's rod,
I cast me not to be odd
With neither of you twain:
Wherefore I write again
How the favour of your face
Is void of all good grace;
For all your carpet cushions,
Ye have knavish conditions.
Gup, marmoset, jast ye, morell!
I am laureate, I am no lorel
Lewdly your time ye spend
My living to reprehend;
And will never intend
Your own lewdness to amend:
Your English lewdly ye sort,
And falsely ye me report.
Garnesche, ye gape too wide:
Your knavery I will not hide,
For to assuage your pride.

When ye were younger of age
Ye were a kitchen-page,
A dish-washer, a drivel,
In the pot your nose did snivel;
Ye fried and ye broiled,
Ye roasted and ye boiled,
Ye roasted, like a fon,
A goose with the feet upon;
Ye sluffered up souce
In my Lady Bruce's house.
Whereto should I write
Of such a greasy knight?
A bawdy dish-clout
That bringeth the world about
With hafting and with polling,
With lying and controlling.

At Guines when ye were
But a slender spere,
Decked lewdly in your gear;
For when ye dwelt there
Ye had a knavish coat
Was scantly worth a groat;
In dud frieze ye were shrined
With better frieze lined;
The outside every day,
Ye might no better a way;
The inside ye did call
Your best gown festivall.
Your drapery ye did want,
The ward with you was scant.
When ye cast a sheep─ùs eye,
. . . . Mistress Andelby,
. . . . Guines upon a gong,
. . . . sat somewhat too long;
. . . . her husband's head
. . . . mall of lead,
. . . . that ye there preached,
To her love ye not reached:
Ye would have bussed her bum
So that she would have come
Unto your lousy den.
But she of all men
Had you most in despite,
Ye lost her favour quite;
Your pilled-garlick head
Could occupy there no stead;
She called you Sir Guy of Gaunt,
Nosed like an elephaunt,
A pickaxe or a twible;
She said how ye did bridle,
Much like a dromedary;
Thus with you she did wary,
With much matter more
That I keep in store.

Your breath is strong and quick;
Ye are an elder-stick;
Ye wot what I think —
At both ends ye stink.
Great danger for the king,
When his Grace is fasting,
His presence to approach:
It is to your reproach.
It falleth for no swine,
Nor sowters, to drink wine,
Nor such a noddipol
A priest for to control.

Little wit in your scrib─ùs noll,
That scribbled your fond scroll,
Upon him for to take
Against me for to make,
Like a doctor dawpate,
A laureate poet for to rate.
Your term─ùs are too gross,
Too far from the purpose,
To contaminate
And to violate
The dignity laureate.

Bold bayard, ye are too blind,
And grow all out of kind,
To occupy so your mind;
For reason can I none find
Nor good rhyme in your matter:
I wonder that ye smatter,
So for a knave to clatter!
Ye would be called a maker
And make much like Jake Raker;
Ye are a comely craker,
Ye learned of some pie-baker!
Cast up your curious writing,
And your dirty inditing,
And your spiteful despiting,
For all is not worth a miting,
A mackerel nor a whiting:
Had ye gone with me to school
And occupied no better your tool,
Ye should have kowthed me a fool.

But now, gawdy, greasy Garnesche,
Your face I wis to varnish
So surely it shall not tarnish.
Though a Saracen's head ye bear,
Rough and full of lousy hair,
As every man well seeth,
Full of great knavish teeth,
In a field of green peason,
Is rhyme yet out of reason;
Your wit is so geson
Ye rail all out of season.

Your skin scabbed and scurvy,
Tawny, tanned, and shurvy;
Now upon this heat
Rankly when ye sweat,
Men say ye will wax lousy,
Drunken, droopy, drowsy!
Your sword ye swear, I ween,
So trenchant and so keen,
Shall cut both white and green:
Your folly is too great
The king's colours to threat.
Your breath it is so fell
And so puauntly doth smell,
And so heinously doth stink,
That neither pump nor sink
Doth savour half so sour
Against a stormy shower.
O ladies of bright colour,
Of beauty that beareth the floure,
When Garnesche cometh you among
With his breath so strong,
Without ye have a confection
Against his poisoned infection,
Else with his stinking jaws
He will cause you cast your craws,
And make your stomach seek
Over the perch to preke.

Now, Garnesche, guard thy gums,
My serpentines and my guns
Against ye now I bend;
Thyself therefore defend.
Thou toad, thou scorpion,
Thou bawdy babion,
Thou bear, thou bristled boar,
Thou Moorish manticore,
Thou rammish stinking goat,
Thou foul churlish parrot,
Thou grisly Gorgon glaimy,
Thou sweaty sloven seimy,
Thou murrion, thou mawment,
Thou false stinking serpent,
Thou mockish marmoset,
I will not die in thy debt!
Tyburn thou me assigned,
Where thou shouldst have been shrined;
The next halter there shall be
I bequeath it whole to thee!
Such pilfery thou hast packed,
And so thyself o'er-watched
That there thou shouldst be racked,
If thou were meetly matched.

Ye may well be bedawed,
Ye are a fool outlawed;
And for to tell the ground,
Pay Stokes his five pound.
I say, Sir Dalyrag,
Ye bear you bold and brag
With other menn─ùs charge:
Ye cut your cloth too large:
Such polling pageants ye play,
To point you fresh and gay.

And he that scribbled your scrolles,
I reckon you in my roll─ùs
For two drunken soul─ùs.
Read and learn ye may
How old proverb─ùs say,
That bird is not honest
That 'fileth his own nest.
If he wist what some wot,
The flesh basting of his coat
Was sowed with slender threde.
God send you well good speed,
With Dominus vobiscum !
Good Latin for Jack-a-Thrum,
Till more matter may come.

Donum Leaureati Distichon contra Golliardum Garnesche et Scribam ejus

Tu, Garnesche, fatuus, fatuus tuus est mage scriba:

Qui sapuit puer, insanit vir, versus in hydram.

Skelton Laureate, Defender, against Lusty Garnesche, Well-be-seen Christopher, Challenger

Garnesche, gorgon, ghastly grime,
I have received your second rime.
Though ye can skill of large and long,
Ye sing alway the cuckoo song:
Ye rail, ye rhyme, with " Hey, dog, hey!"
Your churlish chanting is all one lay.
Ye, sir, rail all in deformity!
Ye have not read the property
Of Nature's work─ùs, how they be
Mixed with some incommodity,
As proveth well in his Rhetorics old
Cicero with his tongue of gold.
That Nature wrought in you and me,
Irrevocable is her decree;
Waywardly wrought she hath in thee,
Behold thyself, and thou mayst see;
Thou shalt behold nowhere a worse,
Thy mirror may be the devil's arse.
With " Knave, sir knave, and knave again!"
To call me knave thou takest great pain:
The proudest knave yet of us twain
Within thy skin he shall remain;
The starkest knave, and least good can,
Thou art called of every man;
The court, the country, village and town,
Saith from thy toe unto thy crown
Of all proud knaves thou bearest the bell,
Loathsome as Lucifer, lowest in hell.
On that side, on this side thou doth gaz─ù,
And thinkest thyself Sir Pierre de Breze,
Thy caitiff's carcass coarse and crazy,
Much of thy manners I can blaz─ù.

Of Lombardy George Ardeson,
Thou would have scored his habergeon;
That gentle George the Januay,
Ye would have enticed his trull away:
Such pageants with your friends ye play
With treachery ye them betray.
Garnesche, ye got of George with gawdry
Crimson velvet for your bawdry.
Ye have a fantasy to Fenchurch Street,
With Lombards' lemans for to meet,
With " Buss me, butting, pretty Cis!"
Your loathsome lips love well to kiss,
Slavering like a slimy snail —
I would ye had kissed her on the tail!

Also not far from Budg─ù Row,
Ye pressed pertly to pluck a crow:
Ye lost your hold, unbend your bow,
Ye won nothing there but a mow;
Ye won nothing there but a scorn;
She would not of it thou had sworn.
She said ye were coloured with coal-dust;
To dally with you she had no lust.
She said your breath stank like a brock,
With " Gup, Sir Guy," ye got a mock!
She swear with her ye should not deal,
For ye were smery, like a seal,
And ye were hairy, like a calf;
She prayed you walk, on Godd─ùs half!
And thus there ye lost your prey —
Get ye another where ye may.

Disparage ye mine ancestry?
Ye are disposed for to lie:
I say, thou fell and foul flesh-fly,
In this debate I thee ascry.
Thou claimest thee gentle, thou art a cur;
Heralds they know thy coat armour:
Though thou be a gentleman born,
Yet gentleness in thee is threadbare worn;
Heralds from honour may thee divorce,
For harlots haunt thine hateful corse.
Ye bear out brothels like a bawd,
And get thereby a slender laud
Between the tappet and the wall —
Fusty bawdias! I say not all.
Of harlots to use such an haras,
Ye breed moths in cloth of Arras.

What aileth thee, ribald, on me to rave?
A king to me mine habit gave:
At Oxford, the university,
Advanced I was to that degree;
By whole consent of their senate
I was made poet laureate.
To call me lorel ye are too lewd:
Lith and listen, all beshrewd!
Of the Muses nine, Calliope
Hath 'pointed me to rail on thee.
It 'seemeth not thy pilled pate
Against a poet laureate
To take upon thee for to scrive:
It 'comes thee better for to drive
A dung-cart or a tumbrel
Than with my poems for to mell.

The honour of England I learned to spell,
In dignity royal that doth excel.
Note and mark well this parcel:
I gave him drink of the sugared well
Of Helicon's waters crystalline,
Acquainting him with the Muses nine.
It 'cometh thee well me to remord
That creanser was to thy sovereign lord!
It pleaseth that noble prince royall
Me as his master for to call
In his learning primordial.
Avaunt, ribald, thy tongue reclaim!
Me to beknave thou art to blame.
Thy tongue untaught, with poison infect,
Without thou leave thou shalt be checked,
And taken up in such a frame
That all the world will spy your shame.
Avaunt, avaunt, thou sluggish . . .
And say poets no dis[honour]
It is for no bawdy knave
The dignity laureate for to have.

Thou callest me scalled, thou callest me mad:
Though thou be pilled, thou art not sad.
Thou art frantic and lackest wit
To rail with me that thee can hit.
Though it be now full-tide with thee,
Yet there may fall such casualty,
Ere thou be ware, that in a throw
Thou mayest fall down and ebb full low.
Wherefore in wealth beware of woe,
For wealth will soon depart thee fro.
To know thyself if thou lack grace,
Learn or be lewd, I shrew thy face!

Thou sayest I called thee a peacock:
Thou lyest, I called thee a woodcock;
For thou hast a long snout,
A seemly nose and a stout,
Pricked like an unicorn:
I would some man's back ink-horn
Were thy nose spectacle-case,
It would garnish well thy face.

Thou deemest my railing overthwart:
I rail to thee such as thou art.
If thou were acquainted with all
The famous poets satirical,
As Persius and Juvenal,
Horace and noble Martial,
If they were living this day,
Of thee wot I what they would say.
They would thee write, all with one stevin,
The foulest sloven under heaven,
Proud, peevish, lither, and lewd,
Malapert, meddler, nothing well-thewed,
Busy, brainless, to brawl and brag,
Witless, wayward, Sir Wrig-wrag,
Disdainous, double, full of deceit,
Lying, spying by subtlety and sleight,
Fleering, flattering, false, and fickle,
Scornful and mocking over too mickle.

My time, I trow, I should but lese
To write to thee of tragedies,
It is not meet for such a knave.
But now my process for to save,
Inordinate pride will have a fall.
Presumptuous pride is all thine hope:
God guard thee, Garnesche, from the rope!
Stop a tide, and be well ware
Ye be not caught in an hempen snare.
Harken thereto, ye Harvy Hafter,
Pride goeth before and shame cometh after.

Thou writest, I should let thee go play:
Go play thee, Garnesche, garnished gay.
I care not what thou write or say,
I cannot let thee the knave to play,
To dance the hay or run the ray:
Thy fond face can me not fray!
Take this for that, bear this in mind,
Of thy lewdness more is behind;
A ream of paper will not hold
Of thy lewdness that may be told.
My study might be better spent;
But for to serve the king's intent,
His noble pleasure and commandment.
Scribble thou, scribble thou, rail or write,
Write what thou wilt, I shall thee requite!