35. They feel in times, with vapour etern: they feel in their seasons, by the emission of an eternal breath or inspiration (that God loves, &c.)
36. The idea of this stanza is the same with that developed in the speech of Theseus at the close of The Knight’s Tale; and it is probably derived from the lines of Boethius, quoted in note 91 to that Tale.
37. In this and the following lines reappears the noble doctrine of the exalting and purifying influence of true love, advanced in “The Court of Love,” “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale,” &c.
38. Weir: a trap or enclosed place in a stream, for catching fish. See note 10 to The Assembly of Fowls.
39. Nor might one word for shame to it say: nor could he answer one word for shame (at the stratagem that brought Cressida to implore his protection)
40. “All n’ere he malapert, nor made avow Nor was so bold to sing a foole’s mass;” i.e. although he was not over-forward and made no confession (of his love), or was so bold as to be rash and ill-advised in his declarations of love and worship.
41. Pandarus wept as if he would turn to water; so, in The Squire’s Tale, did Canace weep for the woes of the falcon.
42. If I breake your defence: if I transgress in whatever you may forbid; French, “defendre,” to prohibit.
43. These lines and the succeeding stanza are addressed to Pandarus, who had interposed some words of incitement to Cressida.
44. In “The Court of Love,” the poet says of Avaunter, that “his ancestry of kin was to Lier; and the stanza in which that line occurs expresses precisely the same idea as in the text. Vain boasters of ladies’ favours are also satirised in “The House of Fame”.