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 lieu 

 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 blossoms straying," 



