tree-top, now down in the briars. "Crop and root," top and
bottom, is used to express the perfection or totality of anything.

30. Beknow: avow, acknowledge: German, "bekennen."

31. Shapen was my death erst than my shert: My death was
decreed before my shirt ws shaped -- that is, before any clothes
were made for me, before my birth.

32. Regne: Queen; French, "Reine;" Venus is meant. The
common reading, however, is "regne," reign or power.

33. Launde: plain. Compare modern English, "lawn," and
French, "Landes" -- flat, bare marshy tracts in the south of
France.

34. Mister: manner, kind; German "muster," sample, model.

35. In listes: in the lists, prepared for such single combats
between champion and accuser, &c.

36. Thilke: that, contracted from "the ilke," the same.

37. Mars the Red: referring to the ruddy colour of the planet, to
which was doubtless due the transference to it of the name of
the God of War. In his "Republic," enumerating the seven
planets, Cicero speaks of the propitious and beneficent light of
Jupiter: "Tum (fulgor) rutilis horribilisque terris, quem Martium
dicitis" -- "Then the red glow, horrible to the nations, which
you say to be that of Mars." Boccaccio opens the "Theseida" by