That noble Chaucer, in those former times,
The first inriched our English with his rhymes;
And was the first of ours, that ever brake
Into the Muses' treasure; and first spake
In weighty Numbers: delving in the mine
Of perfect knowledge, which he could refine
And coin for current; and as much as then
The English language could express to men,
He made it do! and, by his wondrous skill,
Gave us much light from his abundant quill.
-MICHAEL DRAYTON
Chaucer, his sense can only boast;
The glory of his numbers lost!
Years have defaced his matchless strain;
And yet he did not sing in vain!
The beauties which adorned that age,
The shining subjects of his rage,
Hoping they should immortal prove
Rewarded with success his love.
This was the gen'rous poet's scope;
And all an English pen can hope,
To make the fair approve his flame,
That can so far extend their fame!
Verse, thus design'd, has no ill fate,
If it arrive but at the date
Of fading beauty; if it prove
But as long-lived as present Love.
AN ACCOUNT OF
THE GREATEST ENGLISH POETS
Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful Nine;
"Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rhyme and prose.
But age has rusted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscur'd his wit:
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
-JOSEPH ADDISON
INSCRIPTION FOR A STATUE OF CHAUCER AT WOODSTOCK
Such was old Chaucer; such the placid mien
Of him who first with harmony inform'd
The language of our fathers. Here he dwelt
For many a cheerful day. These ancient walls
Have often heard him, while his legends blithe
He sang; of love, or knighthood, or the wiles
Of homely life: through each estate and age,
The fashions and the follies of the world
With cunning hand portraying. Though perchance
From Blenheim's towers, O stranger, thou art come
Glowing with Churchill's trophies; yet in vain
Dost thou applaud them if thy breast be cold
To him, this other hero; who, in times
Dark and untaught, began with charming verse
To tame the rudeness of his native land.
Not far from these,* Dan Chaucer, antient wight,
A lofty seat on Mount Parnassus held,
Who long had been the Muses' chief delight;
His reverend locks were silver'd o'er with eld;
Grave was his visage, and his habit plain;
And while he sung, fair nature he display'd
In verse albeit uncouth, and simple strain;
Ne mote he well be seen, so thick the shade
Which elms and aged oaks had all around him made.
-ROBERT LLOYD
Chaucer, O how I wish thou wert
Alive and, as of yore, alert!
Then, after bandied tales, what fun
Would we two have with monk and nun.
Ah, surely verse was never meant
To render mortals somnolent.
In Spenser's labyrinthine rhymes
I throw my arms o'erhead at times,
Opening sonorous mouth as wide
As oystershells at ebb of tide.
Mistake me not: I honour him
Whose magic made the Muses dream
Of things they never knew before,
And scenes they never wandered o'er.
I dare not follow, nor again
Be wafted with the wizard train.
No bodyless and soulless elves
I seek, but creatures like ourselves.
If any poet now runs after
The Faeries, they will split with laughter,
Leaving him in the desert, where
Dry grass is emblematic fare.
Thou wast content to act the squire
Becomingly, and mount no higher,
Nay, at fit season to descend
Into the poet with a friend,
Then ride with him about thy land
In lithesome nutbrown boots well-tann'd,
With lordly greyhound, who would dare
Course against law the summer hare,
Nor takes to heart the frequent crack
Of whip, with curse that calls him back.
The lesser Angels now have smiled
To see thee frolic like a child,
And hear thee, innocent as they,
Provoke them to come down and play.
-WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Long shalt thou flourish, Windsor! bodying forth
Chivalric times, and long shall live around
Thy Castle-the old oaks of British birth,
Whose gnarled roots, tenacious and profound,
As with a lion's talons grasp the ground.
But should thy towers in ivied ruin rot,
There's one, thine inmate once, whose strain renown'd Would interdict thy name to be forgot;
For Chaucer loved thy bowers and trode this very spot. Chaucer! our Helicon's first fountain-stream,
Our morning star of song-that led the way
To welcome the long-after coming beam
Of Spenser's light and Shakespeare's perfect day.
Old England's fathers live in Chaucer's lay,
As if they ne'er had died. He group'd and drew
Their likeness with a spirit of life so gay,
That still they live and breathe in Fancy's view.
Fresh beings fraught with truth's imperishable hue.
-THOMAS CAMPBELL
WRITTEN ON THE BLANK SPACE OF A LEAF AT THE END OF CHAUCER'S TALE OF "THE FLOWRE AND THE LEFE."*
This pleasant tale is like a little copse:
The honied lines so freshly interlace,
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops;
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops
Come cool and suddenly against his face,
And, by the wandering melody, may trace
Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.
Oh! what a power has white simplicity!
What mighty power has this gentle story!
I, that do ever feel athirst for glory,
Could at this moment be content to lie
Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings
Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.
-JOHN KEATS
An old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound, And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound; He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk. He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote The Canterbury Tales, and his old age Made beautiful with song; and as I read I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note Of lark and linnet, and from every page Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead. -HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW *Mr. Clark had fallen asleep over the book, and on waking, found it on his lap with this addition.
†Copyright 1875 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; 1903 by Ernest W. Longfellow. By permission of Houghton Mifflin Co.
|