Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1342-1400)
“Think! We are prisoners and shall always be.
Fortune has given us this adversity,
Some wicked planetary dispensation,
Some Saturn’s trick or evil constellation
Has given us this, and Heaven, though we had sworn
The contrary, so stood when we were born.
We must endure it, that’s the long and short.”
- The Canterbury Tales (The Knight’s Tale) by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated to modern English by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics, 2003).
