That I n’ am up, and walking in the mede
To sene this floure ayenst the sunnë sprede,
As she that is of all flowris the floure,
Fulfilled of all vertue and honoure
And evir alikë faire and freshe, of hewe,
And evir I love it and ever alikë newe.
These lines of his have given an everlasting perfume to that odorless flower.
How it befell that this son of a vintner came first to have close association with members of the royal household—household of the great Edward III.—we cannot tell; but it is certain that he did come at an early day to have position in the establishment of the King’s son, Prince Lionel, Duke of Clarence; he was sometime valet, too, of Edward III., and in other years a familiar protégé of John of Gaunt—putting his poet’s gloss upon courtly griefs and love-makings.
It is certain, moreover, that in the immediate service of either Prince or King, he went to the wars—as every young man of high spirit in England yearned to do, when war was so great a part of the business of life, and when the Black Prince was galloping in armor and in victory over the fields of Guienne. But it was a bad excursion the poet hit upon; he went when disaster attended the English forces; he was taken prisoner, and though ransomed shortly thereafter—as the record shows—it is uncertain when he returned; uncertain if he did not linger for years among the vineyards of France; maybe writing there his translation of the famous Roman de la Rose[42]—certainly loving this and other such, and growing by study of these Southern melodies into graces of his own, to overlap and adorn his Saxon sturdiness of speech.
There are recent continental critics[43] indeed, who claim him as French, and as finding not only his felicities of verse, but his impulse and his motives among the lilies of France. He does love these lilies of a surety; but I think he loves the English daisies better, and that it is with a thoroughly English spirit that he “powders” the meadows with their red and white, and sets among them the green blades of those island grasses, which flash upon his “morwenyngs of Maie.” To these times may possibly belong—if indeed Chaucer wrote it—“The Court of Love.” Into the discussion of its authenticity we do not enter; we run to cover under an ignorance which is more blissful than the wisdom that wearies itself with comparison of dates, with laws of prosody, with journeyman-like estimate of the tinklings of this or that spurt of rhyming habit. If Chaucer did not write it, we lift our hat to the unknown melodist—who can put the birds in choir—and pass on.