Geoffrey Chaucer — "The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, Th'assay so hard, so sharp the con…"
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, Th'assay so hard, so sharp the conquerynge.
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More from Geoffrey Chaucer
"And thogh a widwe hadde but o sho, So plesaunt was hire song, she wolde have two."
"Out of the olde feldes, as men seyth, Cometh al this newe corn from yeer to yeer; And out of olde bokes, in good feyth, Cometh al this newe science that men lere."
"For hooly chirche's right is to be fed, / Or elles wolde he have his breed of whete, / And of the flour of his owene seed, / And of his corn a very large meel."
"For of his speche, which that he herde of old, / He was a verray Epicurien."
"Of remedies of love she knew al chaunce, For she koude of that art the olde daunce."
About Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343-1400)
English poet, civil servant, and the father of English literature; The Canterbury Tales (~1387-1400) is the founding text of English-language storytelling. Closely associated with Giovanni Boccaccio (his Italian predecessor; the Decameron preceded the Canterbury Tales by ~40 years). For an intellectual contrast, see John Wycliffe, English theologian and Lollard reform-movement leader — Wycliffe and Chaucer were near-contemporaries in the same English Christian world — Chaucer's Wife of Bath and Pardoner are the canonical literary defense of fleshly humanity against the Lollard moral austerity that would later become English Puritanism. Earthy storytelling vs proto-Protestant moralism.