O yonge, fresshe folkes, he or she,
In which that love up groweth with youre age,
Repeyreth hom fro worldly vanyte.

These lines come from the moralizing conclusion (the “Retraction”/closing exhortation) attached to Chaucer’s long dream-vision poem *The Parlement of Foules*. After staging a witty debate among birds on St. Valentine’s Day about love, choice, and desire, Chaucer ends by turning from the playful courtly-love spectacle to a direct address to youthful readers. The speaker urges “yonge, fresshe folkes” whose capacity for love grows with age to withdraw from “worldly vanyte,” a conventional medieval admonition that frames earthly love as potentially distracting from higher, spiritual aims. The shift from comic debate to ethical counsel is characteristic of Chaucer’s habit of closing with a reflective, corrective note.

The passage juxtaposes youthful vitality (“yonge, fresshe folkes”) and the natural growth of love with a warning about “worldly vanyte.” Chaucer’s speaker acknowledges that love is an inevitable, age-linked force, but insists it should not harden into mere appetite, status-seeking, or fashionable display. Read within *The Parlement of Foules*, the lines also function as a meta-commentary on the poem’s own courtly-love pageantry: after enjoying the spectacle, the audience is reminded to discriminate between transient social games and enduring values. The imperative “Repeyreth hom” (“return home”) suggests an inward turning—toward moral self-governance and, by medieval implication, toward spiritual priorities over worldly distraction.