42. The translation is inexact. Dante says—'that its Maker (i. e. the Maker of human nature) did not disdain to become His own creature,' i. e. born of that very human nature which He had Himself created. Cf. l. 49.
45. 'Who is Lord and Guide of the threefold space'; i. e. of the three abodes of things created, viz. the earth, the sea, and the heavens.
46. out of relees, without release, i. e. without relaxation, without ceasing. Out of means without, as is clear from Prol. 487; Kn. Tale, A. 1141; and relees means acquittance (O. Fr. relais); see Cler. Tale, E. 153, &c. There has been some doubt about the meaning of this phrase, but there need be none; especially when it is remembered that to release is another form of to relax, so that relees = relaxation, i. e. slackening. The idea is the same as that so admirably expressed in the Prolog im Himmel to Goethe's Faust.
50. Assembled is in thee, there is united in thee; cf. Dante—'in te s'aduna.' This stanza closely resembles the fourth stanza of the Prioresses Prologue, B. 1664-1670.
52. sonne. By all means let the reader remember that sonne was probably still feminine in English in Chaucer's time, as it is in German, Dutch, and Icelandic to this day. It will be found, however, that Chaucer commonly identifies the sun with Phoebus, making it masculine; see Prol. 8, Kn. Tale, A. 1493. Still, there is a remarkable example of the old use in the first rubric of Part ii. of Chaucer's Astrolabe—'To fynde the degree in which the sonne is day by day, after hir cours a-boute.' So again, in Piers Plowman, B. xviii. 243.
56. hir lyves leche, the physician of their lives (or life).
58. flemed wrecche, banished exile. The proper sense of A. S. wræcca is an exile, a stranger; and thence, a miserable being. The phrase 'fleming of wrecches,' i. e. banishment of the miserable, occurs in Chaucer's Troilus, iii. 933. And see note to l. 36 above.
Lounsbury (Studies, ii. 389) compares this line with l. 62 below, and suggests that Chaucer may have been influenced here by an expression in St. Bernard's Works (cf. l. 30): Respice ergo, beatissima Virgo, ad nos proscriptos in exsilio filios Euae'; Tractatus ad Laudem Gloriosae Virginis; in the Works, vol. i. p. 1148, in Migne's Patrologia, vol. 182. This suggestion greatly strengthens the probability, that ll. 36-56 form a later insertion.
galle, bitterness. There is probably an allusion to the name Mary, and to the Hebrew mar, fem. mârâh, bitter. Cf. Exod. xv. 23; Acts viii. 23; Ruth i. 20. Cf. Chaucer's A B C, l. 50.
59. womman Cananee, a translation of mulier Chananaea in the Vulgate version of Matt. xv. 22. Wyclif calls her 'a womman of Canane.'