TANGLE-LEAF PAPERS. 63 
Accordant with the birdes armony, 
Methought it was the best melody 
That might ben yheard of any mon.” 
Indeed, Chaucer is one of the few poets who 
are good companions in the open air. It is 
like a luncheon of fruit and nuts and choice 
old wine—reading the “Canterbury Tales ” 
under a plane-tree by the brookside. 
‘“‘ And he himself as swete as is the roote 
Of lokorys, or eny cetewale.” 
—“ Sweete as bragat is or meth, 
Or hoord of apples layd in hay or heth.”’ 
“The hoote somer had maad his hew al brown, 
And certainly he was a good felawe.” 
Chaucer saw nature with frank, wide-open 
eyes, albeit he never forgot to be a scholar, 
as the times went. ; 
“ And in a launde, upon a hill of floures, 
Was set this noble goddesse Nature, 
Of branches were her halles and her boures, 
Ywrought, after her craft and her mesure.” 
“To do Nature honour and pleasaunce”’ was 
so good, in the eyes of the old poet, that he 
did not nicely weigh the manner of the doing, 
viewed from the stand-point of our latter-day 
versifiers, but he let in the crispness of morn- 
ing and the pungency of spring buds in liew 
of these refinements of versification, now so 
highly prized. His knightly spirit and his 
courtly instincts could not repress his abound- 
ing love for the singing-birds, the breezy fields, 
and the wayside brooks. He was artist 
enough to know the value of words and the 
suggestive force of the more elusive elements 
of nature :— 
“Verse, a breeze ’mid blossonis straying,” 
