'Extincti cineres, si ponas sulphura, uiuent;
Sic uetus apposita mente calescit amor.'
3882. For olde, T. has cold, I cannot guess why: smouldering ashes are more likely to be hot. Old ashes mean ashes left after a fire has died down, in which, if raked together, fire can be long preserved. 'Still, in our old ashes, is fire collected.' See the parallel passage in Troilus, ii. 538.
In Soliman and Persida (Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. Hazlitt, v. 339) we find:—
'as the fire
That lay, with honour's hand raked up in ashes,
Revives again to flames.'
We are reminded of line 92 in Gray's Elegy:—'Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires'; but Gray himself tells us that he was thinking, not of Chaucer, but of Sonnet 169 (170) of Petrarch:—
'Ch'i veggio nel pensier, dolce mio fuoco,