GEOFFREY CHAUCER. My maister CHAUCER, with his fresh Comedies Is dead, alas! chief Poet of Britaine, Whom all this land should of good right prefer, But welaway! so is mine hearte woe That the honour of English tongue is dead, O, Master deare! and father reverent, My master CHAUCER, flower of eloquence! O, universal father in science, Alas! that thou thine excellent prudence, In thy bed mortal, mightest not bequeath! JOHN LYDGATE, What ailed Death ?-Alas! why take thy breath? Courageous Cambel and stout Triamond With Canance and Cambine link'd in lovely bond. XXXI. WHILOM as antique stories tellen us, Those two were foes the fellonest on ground, And battle made, the dreadest dangerous, That ever shrilling trumpet did resound: Though now their acts be nowhere to be found, OCCLEVE. XXXII. But wicked Time, that all good thoughts doth waste O cursed Eld! the canker-worm of wits; How may these rhymes (so rude as doth appear) Are quite devour'd, and brought to nought by little bits. XXXIII. Then pardon, O most sacred happy spirit, That I thy labors lost may thus revive, And steal from thee, the meed of thy due merit, And being, dead, in vain yet many strive: Ne dare I like, but through infusion sweet Of thine own spirit (which doth in me survive) That with thy meaning so I may the rather meet, FAIRY QUEEN.-L. 4. Canto 2. Old CHAUCER, like the morning star, To us discovers day from far, His light those mists and clouds dissolved, But he descending to the shades, Darkness again the age invades, Next (like Aurora) Spenser rose Whose purple blush the day foreshows. DENHAM. The greatest personage of the fourteenth century, whose name, by the force of his genius, is raised above kings, and transmitted to posterity, is Geoffrey Chaucer, who is hailed as the morning star of English Poetry. The estimation in which he was held attests the influence which he exerted upon his age; he stamped his own image upon it, and time has not effaced the impress which he gave to it. |