49. But of course it does not in the least matter what it means. All
that matters specially to us in Chaucer's vision, is that, next to
Patience (as the reader will find by looking at the context in the
"Assembly of Foules"), were "Beheste" and "Art;"--Promise, that is, and
Art: and that, although these visionary powers are here waiting only in
one of the outer courts of Love, and the intended patience is here only
the long-suffering of love; and the intended beheste, its promise; and
the intended art, its cunning,--the same powers companion each other
necessarily in the courts and antechamber of every triumphal home of
man. I say triumphal home, for, indeed, triumphal _arches_ which you
pass under, are but foolish things, and may be nailed together any day,
out of pasteboard and filched laurel; but triumphal _doors_, which you
can enter in at, with living laurel crowning the Lares, are not so easy
of access: and outside of them waits always this sad portress, Patience;
that is to say, the submission to the eternal laws of Pain and Time, and
acceptance of them as inevitable, smiling at the grief. So much pains
you shall take--so much time you shall wait: that is the Law. Understand
it, honor it; with peace of heart accept the pain, and attend the hours;
and as the husbandman in his waiting, you shall see, first the blade,
and then the ear, and then the laughing of the valleys. But refuse the
Law, and seek to do your work in your own time, or by any serpentine way
to evade the pain, and you shall have no harvest--nothing but apples of
Sodom: dust shall be your meat, and dust in your throat--there is no
singing in such harvest time.

50. And this is true for all things, little and great. There is a time
and a way in which they can be done: none shorter--none smoother. For
all noble things, the time is long and the way rude. You may fret and
fume as you will; for every start and struggle of impatience there shall
be so much attendant failure; if impatience become a habit, nothing but
failure: until on the path you have chosen for your better swiftness,
rather than the honest flinty one, there shall follow you, fast at hand,
instead of Beheste and Art for companions, those two wicked hags,

"With hoary locks all loose, and visage grim;
Their feet unshod, their bodies wrapt in rags,
And both as swift on foot as chased stags;
And yet the one her other legge had lame,
Which with a staff all full of little sn