which he answers thus:

"Ne Deth, alas! ne will not han my lif.
Thus walke I like a restless caitiff,
And on the ground, which is my modres gate,
I knocke with my staf, erlich and late,
And say to hire, "Leve mother, let me in.
Lo, how I vanish, flesh and blood and skin,
Alas! when shall my bones ben at reste?
Mother, with you wolde I changen my cheste,
That in my chambre longe time hath be,
Ye, for an heren cloute to wrap in me."
But yet to me she will not don that grace,
For which ful pale and welked is my face."

They then ask the old man where they shall find out Death to kill
him, and he sends them on an errand which ends in the death of all
three. We hear no more of him, but it is Death that they have
encountered!

The interval between Chaucer and Spenser is long and dreary. There is
nothing to fill up the chasm but the names of Occleve, "ancient Gower,"
Lydgate, Wyatt, Surry, and Sackville. Spenser flourished in the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, and was sent with Sir John Davies into Ireland, of
which he has left behind him some tender recollections in his
description of the bog of Allan, and a record in an ably written paper,
containing observations on the state of that country and the means of
improving it, which remain in full force to the present day. Spenser
died at an obscure inn in London, it is supposed in distressed
circumstances. The treatment he received from Burleigh is well known.