But yet, alas, I was quite deceived;
The thing itself doth easily appear;
I would, alas, I had been buried,
When to my father I gave not ear!
That which I had I have clean spent,
And kept so much riot with the same,
That now I am fain a coat that is rent,
Alas, to wear for very shame.
I have not a cross left in my purse
To help myself now in my need,
That well I am worthy of God's curse,
And of my father to have small meed.
[_Here the Rich Man must be as it were coming in_.
But except mine eyes do me beguile,
That man is my father, whom I do see:
And now that he comes, without craft or wile,
To him I will bend on either knee.
Ah, father, father, my father most dear!
FATHER. Ah! mine own child, with thee what cheer?
SON. All such sayings as in my mind
At the first time ye studied to settle,
Most true, alas, I do them find,
As though they were written in the Gospel.
FATHER. Those words, my son, I have almost forgotten;
Stand up, therefore, and kneel no longer,
And what it was I spake so often,
At two or three words recite to thy father.
SON. If that ye be, father, well remembered,
As the same I believe ye cannot forget,
You said that, so soon as I were married,
Much pain and trouble thereby I should get.
FATHER. Hast thou by proof, son, this thing tried?
SON. Yea, alas, too much I have experienced:
My wife I did wed all full of frenzy.
My seely poor shoulders hath now so bruised,
That like to a cripple I move me weakly,
Being full often with the staff thwacked:
She spareth no more my flesh and bone,
Than if my body were made of stone!
Her will, her mind, and her commandment
From that day hither I have fulfilled,
Which if I did not, I was bitterly shent,
And with many strokes grievously punished:
That would God, the hour when I was married,
In the midst of the church I might have sinked.
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