"The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer, The Host Stops Chaucer's Tale of Sir Topaz

You’re wearying me
To death, I say, with your illiterate stuff.

My ears are aching from your frowsty story!
The devil take such rhymes! They’re purgatory!

That must be what’s called doggerel-rhyme

‘Why so?’ said I, ‘Why should you hinder me
In telling my tale more than another man,
Since I am giving you the best I can?’

Your dreary rhyming isn’t worth a turd!

Sir, in a word, you shall no longer rhyme.
Let’s see if you can tell us one of those
Old tales from history; and speak in prose.

Let it be gay or have a wholesome moral.

Dear God, I hate a quarrel.
So let me tell a little thing in prose
That ought to give you pleasure, I suppose,
Or else it must be very hard to please you;
It has a virtuous moral to appease you

Their meaning doubtless was agreed upon.
And therefore let me beg of you, my lords,
If you should think my story ill accords
With the original

if, for instance, more
Proverbial matter than you’ve heard before
Is thrust into my little treatise here
To enforce its meaning in the moral sphere