In youthe he made of Ceys and Alcione, &c.
(Link to Man of Law's Tale, ll. 46 ff.)
Gower's rendering is the more poetical.
a 2. Trocinie. Ovid's Trachinia tellus, so called from the city of Trachis, north-west of Thermopylae.
a 23. As he which wolde go: otiose, or at best meaning no more than 'desiring to go'. Cp. b 25 As he which hadde = 'having' simply; and similarly b 37, 203. It is an imitation of a contemporary French idiom comme celui qui.
a 26. and: the displacement of the conjunction from its natural position at the beginning of the clause is characteristic of Gower's verse. Cp. l. 152 Upon the morwe and up sche sterte = 'and in the morning she got up', and a 45, 49, b 121, 124, 135, 160, 182. See notes to ll. 32, 78 f.
a 32. Editors put a comma after wepende, and no stop after seileth: but it is Alceoun who weeps. The displacement of and is exemplified in the notes to l. 26 and ll. 78 f.
a 37. 'One had not to look for grief'; a regular formula of understatement, meaning 'her grief was great'.
a 53. Hire reyny cope, &c.: the rainbow, which was the sign or manifestation of Iris.
a 59 ff.