Classic Poem

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.