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CHAUCER'S POEMS.

THE

CANTERBURY TALES.

POEMS

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

1885. The Canterbury Tales.

THE PROLOGUE.

WHAN that Aprille with his schowres swoote1

The drought of Marche hath perced to the roote,

Ametrical analysis of the first few lines of the Prologue, in which examples of most of the peculiarities of inflexion and accentuation alluded to in the introduction occur, will, it is hoped, enable the reader to conquer any difficulties of this nature that may present themselves The principles here indicated will be found applicable

in the verse.

throughout the poem. This is Tyrwhitt's plan; but it will be seen that, as the text is different from his, so also is the metre. The marks of long and short, properly applied to the classical metres only, are here used as being plainer than an accent on the accented syllables :

• Whăn thāt | April | lě with | his schūw | rěs swote

Thẽ drought | of Marche | hăth për | cẽd tō | thế rõote,
And bã | thŭd ēve | rỹ vēyne | In swich | licōur,
Of which | vertüe |ëngën | drěd is | the flour;
Whăn Zephyrūs | ček with | his swe❘ tě brēeth
Enspi | rud hath | in eve | ry hōlte | ănd heeth
Thẻ tên | drẻ crop | pěs, ānd | thě yn | gẽ sonne
Hath in the Rām | his hāl | fẻ cōurs | I-rönne,
And smā | lẽ fōw | lēs mā | kèn mē | lõdie,
That slepen al | the night | with ō | pěn yhe,
So prík | ĕth hem | nătüre | in here | cărăges:-

Thănne lõngen fölk | to gōn | Ŏn pil | grimages, &c.'

Here the final e in Aprille, swete, halfe, yonge, smale is pronounced; but

And bathud every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertue' engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Enspirud hath in every holte and heeth
The tendre
and the
croppes,
sonne❜
yonge
Hath in the Ram' his halfe cours i-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodie,
That slepen al the night with open yhe,
So priketh hem nature in here corages:-
Thanne longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,

It is quiescent in Marche, veyne, nature, because in these cases it is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, or with the letter h. This is the rule of French poetry. The final es is pronounced in croppes, forcles, as in German. The French words licour, nature, corages are accented on the last syllable of the root, as in French. The reader will also remark the old forms of hem and here, for them and their ; and slepen, maken, the Anglo-Saxon inflexion of the infinitive and plural verb: i-ronne is also the pret. part. of rennen, to run, as in German, gelobt, from loben.

1 Vertue here signifies power. The meaning is, when April has bathed every vein of the earth in that moisture which, by its genial power, produces the blossom.

•Where now the vital energy that moved,

While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph
Through the imperceptible meandering veins
Of leaf and flower? It sleeps; and the icy touch
Of unprolific winter has impressed

A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.'

COWPER.-Task. Winter Walk at Noon. 2 The sun is said to be young, as having only just entered upon his annual progress through the signs of the Zodiac.

3 For Ram, Tyrwhitt proposes to read Bull, because in April the sun has entered the sign of Taurus. The study of astronomy was introduced into Europe in the middle ages by the Arabs. [The reading Ram is right. The sun, during April, ran a half-course in the Ram, and a halfcourse in the Bull, because it entered Taurus about the middle of the month. Chaucer means that it was past the middle of the month. It was, in fact, April the 16th. By the time the Man of Lawe told his tale it was April the 18th, as Chaucer tells us. See Scheme, vol. ii. pp. 351-354.-W. W.S.] • So nature spurs or excites them in their passions. Courage means generally impulse, desire, as devout courage,' further on, impulse of devotion.

And palmers' for to seeken straunge strondes.
To ferne' halwes, kouthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every schires ende
Of Engelond, to Canturbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir' for to seeke,

That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.*

1

Speght makes the distinction between palmers and pilgrims to consist in the former never ceasing to go from shrine to shrine, while the latter are under a vow only to perform one specified pilgrimage. In this fanciful interpretation he is followed by Sir Walter Scott. It is obvious that palmer means one who has made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and brought home a palm-branch as a token, just as the pilgrims to Saint James of Compostella used to bring home a cockleforeign strands. Thus Chaucer makes the palmers long to seek strange, i. e.,

shell.

2 Speght and Tyrwhitt for ferne, read serve. The reading in the text has been restored by Mr. Wright from the Harl. MS., and means distant, from fer far. Halwes, meaning saints, is still retained in the Scottish Hallowe'en, the Eve of All Hallows, or All Saints. In the Lord's Prayer, Hallowed be thy name? is the translation of sanctificetur nomen tuum. Kouthe, known, from kennen, to know, survives in our uncouth, unknown, strange.

3 Thomas à Becket, the Chancellor of Henry II. The King raised him to the see of Canterbury in the hope that he would become a willing instrument in establishing the Norman dynasty and oppressing the Saxons; but finding, on the contrary, that he strenuously defended the rights of the church and of the conquered and oppressed people, be employed three of his retainers to murder him while he was saying mass in his cathedral. Becket was soon afterwards canonized, and his remains, which were preserved at Canterbury, became an object of Pilgrimage. Id. Macaulay says, It was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to the shrine of Becket, the Arst Englishman who, since the Conquest, had been terrible to the foreign tyrants.'-Hist. Eng., vol. i.

Erasmus, in his Peregrinatio

Who had helped them by his prayers, and been thus instrumental to their recovery. In the middle ages it was usual, in sickness or peril, to vow a pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint, and if the person was restored to health or escaped the danger, the happy issue was ascribed to the prayers of the saint, whose shrine was heaped with rich offerings in acknowledgment. religionis ergo, alludes to numbers of arms and legs hung up in the shrine of Saint Thomas in gratitude for the cures effected in these particular limbs by his prayers. Similar memorials may still be seen in churches on the continent. or pilgrimage to Jerusalem when he was so ill as to be thought past

recovery;

Saint Louis vowed his first crusade

and on his return, when he and the Queen were in danger

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