Qui bien aime, tard oublie. <45>
“Now welcome summer, with thy sunnes soft,
That hast these winter weathers overshake * *dispersed, overcome
Saint Valentine, thou art full high on loft,
Which driv’st away the longe nightes blake;* *black
Thus singe smalle fowles for thy sake:
Well have they cause for to gladden* oft, *be glad, make mirth
Since each of them recover’d hath his make;* *mate
Full blissful may they sing when they awake.”
And with the shouting, when their song was do,* *done
That the fowls maden at their flight away,
I woke, and other bookes took me to,
To read upon; and yet I read alway.
I hope, y-wis, to reade so some day,
That I shall meete something for to fare
The bet;* and thus to read I will not spare. *better
Explicit.* *the end
Notes to The Assembly of Fowls
1. “The Dream of Scipio” — “Somnium Scipionis” — occupies most of the sixth book of Cicero’s “Republic;” which, indeed, as it has come down to us, is otherwise imperfect. Scipio Africanus Minor is represented as relating a dream which he had when, in B.C. 149, he went to Africa as military tribune to the fourth legion. He had talked long and earnestly of his adoptive grandfather with Massinissa, King of Numidia, the intimate friend of the great Scipio; and at night his illustrious ancestor appeared to him in a vision, foretold the overthrow of Carthage and all his other triumphs, exhorted him to virtue and patriotism by the assurance of rewards in the next world, and discoursed to him concerning the future state and the immortality of the soul. Macrobius, about AD. 500, wrote a Commentary upon the “Somnium Scipionis,” which was a favourite book in the Middle Ages. See note 17 to The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.
2. Y-nome: taken; past participle of “nime,” from Anglo-Saxon, “niman,” to take.
3. His grace: the favour which the gods would show him, in delivering Carthage into his hands.
4. “Vestra vero, quae dicitur, vita mors est.” (“Truly, as is said, your life is a death”)