Perhaps a comparison may bring definition nearer. The first part of Mr Masefield's poem, which describes the meet and the assembled persons one by one, recalls, not merely by the general cast of the subject, but by many actual turns of phrase, Chaucer's _Prologue_. Mr Masefield's parson has more than one point of resemblance to Chaucer's Monk:-- 'An out-ryder, that loved venerye; A manly man to ben an abbot able....' But it would take too long to quote both pictures. We may choose for our juxtaposition the Prioress and one of Mr Masefield's young ladies:-- 'Behind them rode her daughter Belle, A strange, shy, lovely girl, whose face Was sweet with thought and proud with race, And bright with joy at riding there. She was as good as blowing air, But shy and difficult to know. The kittens in the barley-mow, The setter's toothless puppies sprawling, The blackbird in the apple calling, All knew her spirit more than we. So delicate these maidens be In loving lovely helpless things.' And here is the Prioress:-- 'But for to speken of hir conscience, She was so charitable and so pitous, She wolde weepe if that she sawe a mous Caught in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. Of smalle houndes had she, that she fed With rosted flesh, or milk, or wastel bread, But sore wepte she if oon of hem were ded Or if men smote it with a yerde smerte: And all was conscience and tendere herte.' Ful semely hir wympel pynched was; His nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas; Hir mouth full small, and thereto soft and red, But sikerly she hadde a fair forhed.' There is in the Chaucer a naturalness, a lack of emphasis, a confidence that the object will not fail to make its own impression, beside which Mr Masefield's demonstration and underlining seem almost _malsain_. How far outside the true picture now appears that 'blackbird in the apple calling,' and how tainted by the desperate _bergerie_ of the Georgian era! It is, we admit, a portentous experiment to make, to set Mr Masefield's prologue beside Chaucer's. But not only is it a tribute to Mr Masefield that he brought us to reading Chaucer over again, but the comparison is at bottom just. Chaucer is not what we understand by a great poet; he has none of the imaginative comprehension and little of the music that belong to one: but he has perdurable qualities. He is at home with his speech and at home with his world; by his side Mr Masefield seems nervous and uncertain about both. He belongs, in fact, to a race (or a generation) of poets who have come to feel a necessity of overloading every rift with ore. The question is whether such a man can hope to express the glory and the fragrance of the English country-side.