and again:—
And see the fresshe floures how they spring.
Ful is mine heart of revel and solas.
Spring is part of him:—
Saluteth in her song the morning gray;
And fyry Phœbus ryseth up so bright
That al the orient laugheth for the sight;
And with his stremes drieth in the greeves
The silver dropes hanging on the leeves.
Although on ordinary days he may sit over his book “as dumb as any stone,” yet when nature smiles he is up and away:—
Farewel, my book—and my devocioun.
Other poets write about the beauties of the outer world. To none of them does Chaucer yield, and as a lover of sunlight, of birds, of the golden world he stands with the Psalmists and with Wordsworth. Along with this gladness are the deeper notes. How strange to find in Chaucer the sadness of life and the wistful outlook on “the sombre sides of man’s destiny”:—
Now with his love, now in the colde grave
Alone, withouten any company.
The old man, weary of his life, cries to the young revellers:—
Thus walk I like a resteless caitiff;
And on the ground which is my mothers gate
I knocke with my staf both erly and late,
And say, “O deere mother, let me in.”
The dying knight, who has won all that he desired and who died in sight of his heaven, is one more instance of the sadness of destiny:—
But on his lady yet he caste his eye.
His laste word was, “Mercy, Emelye.”
Throughout the Tales “man goeth forth to his work and to his labour—until the evening.” Yet nothing escapes Chaucer’s humour. He will not even let himself escape: he must needs give us a humorous description of Geoffrey Chaucer:—
That lookest as thou woldest finde an hare,
For ever upon the ground I see thee stare.
Approche near and loke up merrily.
Now ware you, sirs, and let this man have place,
He in the waist is shaped as wel as I;
This were a poppet in the arm to embrace
For any womman smal and fair of face.
He admits he has written on several subjects:—
On metres and on ryming craftily
Hath said it—in such English as he can.
Yet when he consents to tell the rest of them a tale,obviously a travesty of medieval romances, the Host stops him in the middle of a line:—
Quoth oure hoste, for thou makest me
So weary of thy verray lewednesse
Mine eares achen at thy drasty speche
This may wel be rime doggerel, quoth he.
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