“Till that the brightë sun had lost his hue,
For th’ orisont had reft the sun his light,
(This is as much to sayen as ‘it was night.’)”
Nay, sometimes it twinkles roguishly through his very tears, as in the
“‘Why wouldest thou be dead,’ these women cry,
‘Thou haddest gold enough—and Emily?’”
that follows so close upon the profoundly tender despair of Arcite’s farewell:—
“What is this world? What asken men to have?
Now with his love now in the coldë grave
Alone withouten any company!”
The power of diffusion without being diffuse would seem to be the highest merit of narration, giving it that easy flow which is so delightful. Chaucer’s descriptive style is remarkable for its lowness of tone,—for that combination of energy with simplicity which is among the rarest gifts in literature. Perhaps all is said in saying that he has style at all, for that consists mainly in the absence of undue emphasis and exaggeration, in the clear uniform pitch which penetrates our interest and retains it, where mere loudness would only disturb and irritate.
Not that Chaucer cannot be intense, too, on occasion; but it is with a quiet intensity of his own, that comes in as it were by accident.
“Upon a thickë palfrey, paper-white,
With saddle red embroidered with delight,
Sits Dido:
And she is fair as is the brightë morrow
That healeth sickë folk of nightës sorrow.
Upon a courser startling as the fire,
Æneas sits.”
Pandarus, looking at Troilus,
“Took up a light and found his countenance
As for to look upon an old romance.”