That sprungen out against the sunné sheen,
Some very red, and some a glad light green,
“Which (as me thought) was a right pleasant sight;
And eke the birdés songés for to hear
Would have rejoicéd any earthly wight;
And I, that could not yet in no mannere
Hearen the nightingale of all the year,
Full busily heark’ned with heart and ear.
If I her voice perceive could anywhere.”
This is exactly the Chaucer landscape. The forest trees are described each after their kind; even the varieties of color of oak leaves in spring-time he notes, some coming out “very red,” some of a golden green hue—a fact not noticed, as far as I remember, by any other poet; the soft green grass, as soft as velvet under foot, he is never done praising; the note of each song-bird he knows and delights in. These, with here and there a quaint old garden described, such is the scenery in which his human portraits are inlaid. He is altogether one of the most amply descriptive of English poets till we arrive at quite recent times. And it is one sign of the permanence and stability of England, even amidst all change, that among the copsewoods of Kent and the lanes of Surrey just such scenes may be seen any spring-day now as Chaucer loved to describe nearly five hundred years ago. This unchanged landscape is everywhere in his poetry blended with the mediæval manners and costumes that have long since passed, as a modern poet, in phrase like Chaucer’s own, has well sung:—