Trouble you not the crooked to redress,
Trusting in her who wobbles like a ball.
One of “Truth”’s central concerns is the problems of what we have been calling “worldliness,” or concern with material values and ordinary life rather than spiritual existence. Here, Chaucer plays with the literal connotations of the word. He refers to the earth as “her who wobbles like a ball,” suggesting that the unreliability of day-to-day life derives from the physical characteristics of the earth itself. In the preceding line, he also puns on the earth’s wobbling with the word “crooked.” In this context, crooked is metaphorical, and refers to a “crooked” person, or someone who is habitually dishonest and unethical in their actions. The wobbling of the earth in the next line suggests that this crookedness also is an extension of the material world. That equation strengthens his call for Philip to see the world as a foreign land. If he becomes a citizen of the world, he too will inherit its inconsistency.
Here’s not your home, here is but wilderness.
Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beast, out of your stall!
Know your country: look up, thank God for all
These lines mark the climax of the poem. Up to this point, although the speaker has been delivering a great deal of firm advice, his tone has been methodical and rational. Here, he suddenly adopts an urgent, exclamatory tone. Rather than moving systematically from one idea to the next, he repeats phrases multiple times in the same line. In line 17, he says “here’s not your home” and then emphasizes the same idea, “here is but wilderness.” In the next line, he uses the word “forth” three times. The repetition suggests that the speaker has lost his cool and, concerned that his audience is not really listening, has begun to repeat his ideas to really drill them into his mind.
Indeed, this is a different kind of advice. The first two stanzas have been primarily negative; the speaker tells Philip what he shouldn’t do. Here, he tells him what he should do: disregard the world and fix his eyes on salvation.
Therefore, La Vache, cease your old wretchedness;
To the world cease now to be in thrall;
The first couplet in the Envoy establishes the specific audience of “Truth.” La Vache is Sir Philip la Vache, a friend of Chaucer’s and a temporarily disgraced member of the nobility. The whole poem makes a lot of sense as a plea for him not to get too caught up in the injustice of the world, but instead to focus on his own character and the possibility of salvation. The advice is also slightly ambiguous in terms of when the poem was written, and whether Philip is a formerly or currently disgraced nobleman. The advice to “cease your old wretchedness” describes Philip as miserable, perhaps in response to being thrown out of court. However, the word “old” implies that his disgrace is in the past. Similarly, the injunction to cease to be “in thrall” to the world may imply that Philip’s sadness indicates that, even though he has lost his position in court, he still remains a slave to its temptations. However, it could also address a Philip who has regained his position. Perhaps he has failed to learn from his fall from grace, and continues to put trust in the rewards of the court. If so, the poem takes on a less comforting and more subversive and challenging tone.
