The leaves lancen from the lynde[137] and light(en) on the ground,
and
Unblithe on bare twigs sings many a bird
Piteously piping for pain of the cold.
(Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight.)
The battles and tournaments, accounts of which fill so many pages of the romances, for the most part show considerable sameness of treatment. The hero is beaten to his knees by the giant, or is almost overpowered by the poisonous breath of the dragon, when with a supreme effort he recovers himself and pierces his adversary in whatever his one vital spot may happen to be. Now and then some flash of ingenuity lights up the story, as when the Soldan’s daughter saves Roland and Oliver and their companions by flinging her father’s plate to the besieging army, thus at once distracting the attention of the soldiers and making her avaricious father ready to consent to any compromise; or some touch of real feeling breaks through all conventions, as when Sir Tristram, as he turns to meet Marhaus, kicks away his boat, since but one of them will need any means of leaving the isle; but for the most part the author follows the regular lines.
Chaucer, while he shows definite traces of the conventions of his day, in description, as in other matters, follows his own bent. Description for its own sake has little interest for him. Again and again he cuts short some passage which his contemporaries would have elaborated. In the Squieres Tale, for instance, a banquet occurs which affords admirable opportunity for that detailed account of ceremonial so dear to the hearts of medieval poets. Chaucer tells us that the steward ordered spices and wine, and then adds impatiently:—
What nedeth yow rehercen hir array?[138]
Ech man wot wel, that at a kinges feeste
Hath plentee, to the moste and to the leeste,
And deyntees mo than been in my knowing.
The dinner given by Deiphebus in Troilus and Criseyde is passed over equally perfunctorily:—
Come eek Criseyde, al innocent of this,
Antigone, hir sister Tarbe also;
But flee we now prolixitee best is,
For love of god, and lat us faste go
Right to the effect, with oute tales mo,
Why al this folk assembled in this place;
And lat us of hir saluinges pace.[139]
Even the hunt in the Book of the Duchesse is dismissed in little over a dozen lines:—
Whan we came to the forest-syde
Every man dide, right anoon,
As to hunting fil to doon.[140]
The mayster-hunte anoon, fot-hoot,[141]
With a gret horne blew three moot[142]
At the uncoupling of his houndes.
Within a whyl the hert [y]-founde is,
Y-halowed and rechased faste
Longe tyme; and at the laste
This hert rused[143] and stal away
Fro alle the houndes a prevy way ...