Thus day by day this child began to cry,
Till in his father's lap adown he lay,
And saide: "Farewell, father, I must die!"
And kissed his father, and died the same day.
The woeful father saw that dead he lay,
And his two arms for woe began to bite,
And said: "Fortune, alas and well-away!
For all my woe I blame thy treacherous spite."

His children weened that it for hunger was,
That he his arms gnawed, and not for woe.
And saide: "Father, do not so, alas!
But rather eat the flesh upon us two.
Our flesh thou gavest us, our flesh thou take us fro,
And eat enough." Right thus they to him cried;
And after that, within a day or two,
They laid them in his lap adown and died.

The father in despair likewise died of hunger; and such was the end of the
mighty Earl of Pisa, whose tragedy whosoever desires to hear at greater
length may read it as told by the great poet of Italy hight Dante.

The other instance is that of the "Pardoner's Tale," which would appear to
have been based on a fabliau now lost, though the substance of it is
preserved in an Italian novel, and in one or two other versions. For the
purpose of noticing how Chaucer arranges as well as tells a story, the
following attempt at a condensed prose rendering of his narrative may be
acceptable:--