Scattering unbeholden'
Its aërial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from

the view;

Like a rose embower'd

In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflower'd,
Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy wingèd

thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

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Joyous and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 15

Teach us, sprite1 or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine;

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal3

Or triumphal chaunt,

Matched with thine would be all

But an empty vaunt

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A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 25

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain? 30

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee;

Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem

Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream,

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? 10

We look before" and after,

And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught:

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear

If we were things born

Not to shed a tear—

I know not how thy joy we ever could come near.

Better than all measures

Of delight and sound,

Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 25

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then as I am listening now. 30

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15.

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XXXIX.

CULTURE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

BY DAVID MASSON.'

THE fourteenth century in our island was not what we should now hold up as a model age, a soft age, a pleasant age for a lady or gentleman that has been accustomed to modern ideas and modern comforts to be transferred back into. It was the age of the three first Edwards, Richard II., and Henry IV. in England, and of the Wallace interregnum, Bruce, David II., and the two first Stuarts in Scotland. Much was done in it, as these names will suggest, that has come down as picturesque story and stirring popular legend. It is an age, on that 10 account, in which school-boys and other plain uncritical readers of both nations revel with peculiar relish. Critical inquirers, too, and real students of history, especially of late, have found it an age worth their while, and have declared it full of important facts and powerful char-15

acters.

Not the less, the inveterate impression among a large number of persons of a rapid modern way of thinking is that all this interesting vision of the England and Scotland of the fourteenth century is mere poet-20 ical glamour or antiquarian make-believe, and that the real state of affairs was one of mud, mindlessness, fighting, and scramble generally; no tea and no newspapers, but plenty of hanging, and murder almost ad libitum. Now, these are most wrongheaded persons, 25

and they might be beaten black and blue by sheer force of records. But out of kindliness one may take a gentler method with them, and try to bring them right by æsthetic suasion. It so chances, for example, that there are literary remains of the fourteenth century, both 5 English and Scottish, and that the authors of the chief of these were Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English literature proper, and John Barbour, the father of the English literature of North Britain. Let us take a few bits from Chaucer and Barbour. Purposely, we shall10 take bits that may be already familiar.

3

Here is Chaucer's often-quoted description of the scholar, or typical student of Oxford University, from the Prologue to his "Canterbury Tales":

"A Clerk there was of Oxenford also,
That unto logic haddè long ygo,
As leanè was his horse as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake;
But looked hollow, and thereto soberly.
Full threadbare was his overest courtepy;5
For he had getten him yet no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office;
For him was liefer have at his bed's head
A twenty bookès, clothed in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie
Than robès rich, or fiddle, or sautrie.
But, albe that he was a philosopher,
Yet had he but a little gold in coffer;

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Of hem that gave him wherewith to scholáy."

Of study took he most cure and heed;
Not oe word spak he more than was need;
And that was said in form and reverence,
And short and quick, and full of high sentence;
Sounding in moral virtue was his speech,
And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.”

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Or take an out-doors scene from one of Chaucer's reputed minor poems. It is a description of a grove or wood in spring, or early summer :

"In which were oakés great, straight as a line,
Under the which the grass, so fresh of hue,
Was newly sprung, and an eight foot or nine
Every tree well fro his fellow grew,
With branches broad, laden with leavès new,
That sprungen out agen the sunnè sheen,
Some very red, and some a glad light green."

Or, for a tidy in-doors, take this from another poem:

'And, sooth to sayen, my Chamber was
Full well depainted, and with glass
Were all the windows well yglazed
Full clear, and not an hole ycrased,11
That to behold it was great joy;
For wholly all the story of Troy
Was in the glazing ywrought thus,
Of Hector and of King Priamus,
Of Achilles and of King Laomedón,
And eke of Medea and Jasón,
Of Paris, Helen, and Lavine;
And all the walls with colors fine
Weren paint, both text and glose,"
And all the Rómaunt of the Rose:13
My windows weren shut each one,
And through the glass the sunnè shone
Upon my bed with bright beams."

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Or take a little bit of Chaucer's deep, keen slyness, when he is speaking smilingly about himself and his own poetry. He has represented himself as standing in the House or Temple of Fame, observing company after company going up to the goddess, and petitioning for renown in the world for what they have done. Some she grants what they ask, others she dismisses crest-35 fallen, and Chaucer thinks the levee over: