Quotes from work
The Testament of Cresseid

Robert Henryson

The Testament of Cresseid is a narrative poem of 616 lines in Middle Scots, written by the 15th-century Scottish makar Robert Henryson. It is his best known poem. It imagines a tragic fate for Cressida in the medieval story of Troilus and Criseyde which was left untold in Geoffrey Chaucer's version. Henryson's cogent psychological drama, in which he consciously resists and confronts the routine depiction of Cressida as simply 'false', is one of the features that has given the poem enduring interest for modern readers and it is one of the most admired works of northern renaissance literature. A modern English translation by Seamus Heaney, which also included seven of Henryson's fables from The Morall Fabillis, was published in 2009.

“In breif Sermone ane pregnant sentence wryte.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 270.

“Than upon him scho kest up baith hir Ene,
And with ane blenk it come into his thocht,
That he sumtime hir face befoir had sene.
Bot scho was in sic plye he knew hir nocht,
Yit than hir luik into his mynd it brocht
The sweit visage and amorous blenking
Of fair Cresseid sumtyme his awin darling.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 498.

“Lovers be war and tak gude heid about
Quhome that ye lufe, for quhome ye suffer paine.
I lat yow wit, thair is richt few thairout
Quhome ye may traist to have trew lufe agane.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 561.

“Nocht is your fairnes bot ane faiding flour,
Nocht is your famous laud and hie honour
Bot wind Inflat in uther mennis eiris.”

Robert Henryson The Testament of Cresseid

Source: The Testament of Cresseid, Line 461.