The self-indulgent friars are
Like Jovinian,
Fat as a whale, and walken as a swan.
The Pardoner describes his own preaching in these words:
Then pain I me to stretche forth my neck
And east and west upon the people I beck,
As doth a dove, sitting on a barn.
Very often, too, Chaucer derives his happiest metaphors from birds and beasts. Of Troy in its misfortune and decline he says: Fortune
Gan pull away the feathers bright of Troy
From day to day.