The Nuns' Priest's Tale [The Cock and the Hen]

   Once a poor widow, well along the road
To old age, in a little house abode
Beside a forest, standing in a dale.
This widow, of whom I tell you now my tale,
Even since the day when she was last a wife
All patiently had led a simple life;
Small were her earnings and her property,
But what God sent she used with husbandry,
And kept two daughters and herself. Of sows
Three and no more she had about the house,
Also a sheep called Molly, and three kine.
Her sooty hall and bower were nothing fine,
And there full many a slender meal she ate.
No poignant sauce was needed for her plate;
No dainty morsel passed her throat; her fare
Accorded with the clothes she had to wear...
   She had a yard, by stakes well fenced about,
And by a dry ditch girt, that ran without,
And there she kept a cock named Chanticleer;
None in the land at crowing was his peer.
His voice was merrier than the organ's tone
That loud on mass-days in the church is blown,
And surer from his lodge his crowing fell
Than stroke of any clock or abbey bell.
He knew by nature each ascension of
The equinoctial circle arched above,
For when fifteen degrees had been ascended,
He crowed, so that it could not be amended.
His comb was coral-red, and high withal,
And cut in notches, like a castle wall;
Like jet his black bill glittered in the sun,
His legs and toes were azure every one,
No lily-flower could match his nails for white,
And gold was all his body, burnished bright.
This noble cock had under goverance
Seven hens, to do all wholly his pleasance;
Which were his paramours and sisters dear
And in their colors matched him wondrous near;
Of whom she that was fairest-hued of throat
Fairly was called Damoselle Pertelote.
Courteous she was, discreet and debonaire,
Companionable, and bore herself so fair
Even since the day that she was seven nights old,
She hath the heart of Chanticleer in hold--
Locked in each motion, in each graceful limb;
He loved her so, that this was well with him.
But what a joy it was to hear them sing
In sweet accord: "My Love's Gone Journeying"
While the bright sun uprose from out the land,
For this was in the time, I understand,
When all the birds and beasts could sing and speak...

  ~ from The Nuns' Priest's Tale
     Of Chanticleer and Pertelote,
     The Cock and the Hen;
     The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer