Not that he had seen as yet the half of what that house held for the
instruction of pilgrims. Only, time would fail us to visit the hen and
her chickens; the butcher killing a sheep and pulling her skin over her
ears, and she lying still under his hands and taking her death patiently;
also the garden with the flowers all diverse in stature, and quality, and
colour, and smell, and virtue, and some better than some, and all where
the gardener had set them, there they stand, and quarrel not with one
another. The robin-red-breast also, so pretty of note and colour and
carriage, but instead of bread and crumbs, and such like harmless matter,
with a great spider in his mouth. A tree also, whose inside was rotten,
and yet it grew and had leaves. So they went on their way and sang:
'This place hath been our second stage,
Here have we heard and seen
Those good things that from age to age
To others hid have been.
The butcher, garden, and the field,
The robin and his bait,
Also the rotten tree, doth yield
Me argument of weight;
To move me for to watch and pray,
To strive to be sincere,
To take my cross up day by day,
And serve the Lord with few.
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