Have ye nat seen sometime a pale face
among a prees, of him that hath be lad
toward his deeth, wheras him gat no grace,
and swich a colour in his face hath had,
men mighte knowe his face that was bistad
amonges alle the faces in that route?
So stant Custance and looketh hire aboute.

O queenes living in prosperitee,
duchesses and ye ladies everichone,
haveth some routhe on hir adversitee!
An emperour's doghter stant allone;
she hath no wight to whom to make hir mone.
O blood royal that stondest in this drede,
fer be thy frendes at thy grete nede!

[Man of Law's Tale, lines 645–58. Translation, notes, and more 'raw' transcription of the manuscript image above below the fold.]

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Translation

Haven't you at some time seen a pale face among a crowd, of one who has been led towards his death—regarding which, he received no mercy—and has had such a colour in his face that people might know his face placed among all the faces in that mass? So Constance stands, and looks about her.

O queens living in good fortune, duchesses, and all you ladies, have some pity on her hardship! An emperor's daughter stands alone; she has no person to whom to plead. O royal blood that stands in this danger, your friends are far at your time of great need.

Notes

Chaucer has strengths and weaknesses like any writer. I think he's pretty good at pity, or maybe better ruth (routhe—think the opposite of present-day ruthless!).

• Without laying it on too thick or imagining an unremittingly bleak fourteenth century, I think it's fair to note that Chaucer wrote this in a time and place where many would indeed have seen someone led to their execution at least once. As well as a plugged-in Londoner and a busy bureaucrat, Chaucer himself had at various points in his life been a soldier, a prisoner of war, and a confidential royal agent abroad.
• The later fourteenth century is well after the coming of word variation as an aesthetic preference in English poetry, and he's not much given to repetition in the way that, say, Orm or the Orfeo poet are. Nevertheless, he's hammering on face in that first stanza.
• The first stanza's distribution of syntax is unusual: Chaucer rarely has a single isolated syntactic unit make up just the last line of the rhyme royal stanza. He turns more often to a closing pair to fit the couplet cc rhyme at the stanza's end, as in the second stanza quoted here. The sharp return from the opening six-line question to Constance's particular situation stands out.
• In fact, the second stanza draws out much more than many rhyme royal stanzas do the potential bbcc quatrain of adjacent rhyme, two couplets.
• But the second stanza is also two apostrophes (rhetorical addresses: 'O queenes…', 'O blood royal…') sandwiching the ambiguously proverbial remark on her isolation (is this just her current state, or potentially an adage on royal children in general?).
• I think the second stanza's last line has an initial metrical inversion ('Fer be thy frendes', /xx/x), but that's up for debate.

Ruthful writing in the highest register risks ponderousness and puncturing bathos, of course, and it's not just age that make this passage risky: some at the time would have thought it all hot air.

Manuscript transcription

The version of these stanzas above the break has light spelling modernisation, plus added punctuation and capitalisation.

The image is these two stanzas in the Ellesmere Manuscript, folio 56 verso. This is the best single witness to the Canterbury Tales, though it still contains errors that must be emended.

There are no errors that must be emended for raw sense here, but I've followed some other editors in adopting 'ye' in the second line of the second stanza, because it makes the line's metre work. A more faithful transcription of this manuscript page, with abbreviations silently expanded but the rest preserved, would read something like:

Haue ye nat seyn / somtyme a pale face
Among a prees / of hym þat hath be lad
Toward his deeth / wher as hym gat no grace
And swich a colour / in his face hath had
Men myghte knowe / his face that was bistad
Amonges alle the faces / in that route
So stant Custance / and looketh hire aboute

O Queenes / lyuynge in prosperitee
Duchesses / and ladyes euerichone
Haueth som routhe / on hire aduersitee
An Emperours doghter / stant allone
She hath no wight / to whom to make hir mone
O blood roial / that stondest in this drede
Fer been thy freendes / at thy grete nede