For this with golden spurs the chiefs are graced, With pointed rowels armed, to mend their haste; For this with lasting leaves their brows are bound; For laurel is the sign of labour crowned, Which bears the bitter blast, nor shaken falls to ground: From winter winds it suffers no decay, For ever fresh and fair, and every month is May. } grace: This way and that the feeble stem is driven, Weak to sustain the storms and injuries of heaven. Propped by the spring, it lifts aloft the head, But of a sickly beauty, soon to shed; In summer living, and in winter dead. For things of tender kind, for pleasure made, Shoot up with swift increase, and sudden are decayed. With humble words, the wisest I could frame, And proffered service, I repaid the dame; That, of her grace, she gave her maid to know The secret meaning of this moral show. And she, to prove what profit I had made Of mystic truth, in fables first conveyed, Demanded till the next returning May, Whether the leaf or flower I would obey? I chose the leaf; she smiled with sober cheer, And wished me fair adventure for the year, And gave me charms and sigils, for defence Against ill tongues that scandal innocence:But I, said she, my fellows must pursue, Already past the plain, and out of view. We parted thus; I homeward sped my way, Bewildered in the wood till dawn of day; And met the merry crew, who danced about the May. Then late refreshed with sleep, I rose to write The visionary vigils of the night. Blush, as thou may'st, my little book, for shame, Nor hope with homely verse to purchase fame; For such thy maker chose, and so designed Thy simple style to suit thy lowly kind. THE WIFE OF BATH. The original of this tale should probably he sought in some ancient metrical romance. At least, we know, that there exists a ballad connected with the Round Table Romances, entitled "The Marriage of Sir Gawain," which seems to have been taken, not from Chaucer, but some more ancient and romantic legend. Gower also had seized upon this subject, and wrought it into the tale, entitled "Florent," which is the most pleasing in his dull Confessio Amantis. But what was a mere legendary tale of wonder in the rhime of the minstrel, and a vehicle for trite morality in that of Gower, in the verse of Chaucer reminds us of the resurrection of a skeleton, reinvested by miracle with flesh, complexion, and powers of life and motion. Of all Chaucer's multifarious powers, none is more wonderful than the humour, with which he touched upon natural frailty, and the truth with which he describes the inward feelings of the human heart; at a time when all around were employed in composing romantic legends, in which the real character of their heroes was as effectually disguised by the stiffness of their man→ ners, as their shapes by the sharp angles and unnatural projections of their plate armour. Dryden, who probably did not like the story worse, that it contained a passing satire against priests and women, has bestowed considerable pains upon his version. It is, perhaps, not to be regretted, that he left the Prologue to Pope, who has drawn a veil over the coarse nakedness of Father Chaucer. The tale is characteristically placed by the original author, in the mouth of the buxom Wife of Bath, whose mode of governing her different husbands is so ludicrously described in the Prologue. THE WIFE OF BATH HER TALE. IN days of old, when Arthur filled the throne, Gambolled on heaths, and danced on every green; Her beams they followed, where at full she played, Above the rest our Britain held they dear; * Derrick, glance. I speak of ancient times; for now the swain, For priests, with prayers, and other godly gear, And where they played their merry pranks before, And friars, that through the wealthy regions run, *The disappearance of the Fairies, which Chaucer ascribes to the exercitation of the friars, a latter bard, in the same vein of irony, imputes to the Reformation: By which we note the fairies, |