A little marsh-plant, yellow green,
And pricked at lip with tender red.
Tread close, and either way you tread
Some faint black water jets between
Lest you should bruise the curious head.

A live thing maybe; who shall know?
The summer knows and suffers it;
For the cool moss is thick and sweet
Each side, and saves the blossom so
That it lives out the long June heat.

The deep scent of the heather burns
About it; breathless though it be,
Bow down and worship; more than we
Is the least flower whose life returns,
Least weed renascent in the sea.

We are vexed and cumbered in earth's sight
With wants, with many memories;
These see their mother what she is,
Glad-growing, till August leave more bright
The apple-coloured cranberries.

Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,
Blown all one way to shelter it
From trample of strayed kine, with feet
Felt heavier than the moorhen was,
Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.

You call it sundew: how it grows,
If with its colour it have breath,
If life taste sweet to it, if death
Pain its soft petal, no man knows:
Man has no sight or sense that saith.

My sundew, grown of gentle days,
In these green miles the spring begun
Thy growth ere April had half done
With the soft secret of her ways
Or June made ready for the sun.

O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,
I have a secret halved with thee.
The name that is love's name to me
Thou knowest, and the face of her
Who is my festival to see.

The hard sun, as thy petals knew,
Coloured the heavy moss-water:
Thou wert not worth green midsummer
Nor fit to live to August blue,
O sundew, not remembering her.

In a farmyard bright and gay,
Lived a rooster, Chanticleer,
With feathers bright and crow so clear,
He ruled the hens, day by day.

Oh, Chanticleer, the cock so bold,
In his coop, he was not cajoled,
Until one day, a fox appeared,
And the farmyard's peace was soon besmeared!

Reynard the fox, cunning and sly,
Watched Chanticleer with a hungry eye,
He flattered the cock, oh so sly,
With tales of dreams that soared so high.

Chanticleer, in his pride,
Closed his eyes, with the fox beside,
But in a flash, the fox did snap,
Caught the cock in a deadly trap.

Chanticleer, with a cry so shrill,
Called the hens, with all his will,
They chased the fox, away he fled,
With Chanticleer safe, but full of dread.

Now listen well, to this tale so gay,
Of Chanticleer and his fateful day,
Beware the flatterer, with words so fair,
For cunning foxes lurk everywhere!

So here ends our tale of the cock so fine,
And the fox who almost made him dine,
With laughter and mirth, let’s all agree,
The Nun's Priest's Tale, a joy to see!