“Why shulde I not as well eke tell you all
      The purtreiture that was upon the wall
      Within the temple of mighty Mars the rede—­
      That highte the gret temple of Mars in Trace
      In thilke colde and frosty region,
      Ther as Mars hath his sovereine mansion. 
      First on the wall was peinted a forest,
      In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,
      With knotty knarry barrein trees old
      Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold;
      In which ther ran a romble and a swough,
      As though a storme shuld bresten every bough.”

And again, among innumerable terrific images of death and slaughter painted on the wall, is this one: 

      “The statue of Mars upon a carte stood
      Armed, and looked grim as he were wood. 
      A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete
      With eyen red, and of a man he ete.”

The story of Griselda is in Boccaccio; but the Clerk of Oxenforde, who tells it, professes to have learned it from Petrarch.  This story has gone all over Europe, and has passed into a proverb.  In spite of the barbarity of the circumstances, which are abominable, the sentiment remains unimpaired and unalterable.  It is of that kind, “that heaves no sigh, that sheds no tear”; but it hangs upon the beatings of the heart; it is a part of the very being; it is as inseparable from it as the breath we draw.  It is still and calm as the face of death.  Nothing can touch it in its ethereal purity:  tender as the yielding flower, it is fixed as the marble firmament.  The only remonstrance she makes, the only complaint she utters against all the ill-treatment she receives, is that single line where, when turned back naked to her father’s house, she says,

      “Let me not like a worm go by the way.”

The first outline given of the character is inimitable: 

      “Nought fer fro thilke paleis honourable,
      Wher as this markis shope his marriage,
      Ther stood a thorpe, of sighte delitable,
      In which that poure folk of that village
      Hadden hir bestes and her herbergage,
      And of hir labour toke hir sustenance,
      After that the erthe yave hem habundance.

      Among this poure folk ther dwelt a man,
      Which that was holden pourest of hem all: 
      But highe God sometime senden can
      His grace unto a litel oxes stall: 
      Janicola men of that thorpe him call. 
      A doughter had he, faire ynough to sight,
      And Grisildis this yonge maiden hight.

      But for to speke of vertuous beautee,
      Than was she on the fairest under Sonne: 
      Ful pourely yfostred up was she: 
      No likerous lust was in hire herte yronne;
      Ful ofter of the well than of the tonne
      She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese,
      She knew wel labour, but non idel ese.