The Prologue - 1899 Author:Geoffrey Chaucer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAUCER THE PROLOGUE BBRE BEGYNNETH THE BOOK OF THE TALES Of CANTERBURY Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote ' The droghte of Marche hath perced to ... more »the rote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour; i Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth 4-11. Descriptions of the coining of spring are common enough in the scientific literature of the middle ages ; Chaucer may well have known in its Latin form the following (] is the ancient character for th) : — " Ver bigynneth whanfe sonne entriih into the signe of fie Ram. . . . In veer the tyme is so hote, pe wyndis risen, the snowe meltith. Ryvers aforsen hem to renne and wexen hoote, the humydite of the erthe mountith into the croppe of alle growyng thingis, and makith trees and herbes to leve and flowre, pe medis wexen grene, the tedis risen, and cornes wexen, and flouris taken coloure; fowlu dothen them alle newe and bigynne to synge, trees arefulle of leves andfloures, and the erthe alle grene; bestis engendre, and all thingis take myght, the land is in beute clad with flouris of divers coloures, and alle growyng thingis are than in her beicte." (Secrete Secretoruiii, E. E. T. S., Extr. S. LXXIV., p. 27.) Here, as in many another passage, are all the elements of Chaucer's description ; of no other can the reader say witl Lowell, "I repeat it to myself a thousand times, and still at the thousandth time a breath of uncontaminate springtide seems to lift the hair upon my forehead." The tendre croppes, and the yonge, sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale fowles maken melodye, 10 That slepen al the nyght with open ye, So priketh hem nature in hir corages: Than longen folk to goon on pilgrymages, And palmers for to sek...« less