Seeing the knight overcome by his grief, and on the point of fainting, the poet accosts him, and courteously demands his pardon for the intrusion. Thereupon the disconsolate mourner, touched by this token of sympathy, breaks out into the tale of his sorrow which forms the real subject of the poem. It is a lament for the loss of a wife who was hard to gain (the historical basis of this is unknown, but great heiresses are usually hard to gain for cadets even of royal houses), and whom, alas! her husband was to lose so soon after he had gained her. Nothing could be simpler, and nothing could be more delightful than the Black Knight's description of his lost lady as she was at the time when he wooed and almost despaired of winning her. Many of the touches in this description--and among them some of the very happiest--are, it is true, borrowed from the courtly Machault; but nowhere has Chaucer been happier, both in his appropriations and in the way in which he has really converted them into beauties of his own, than in this, perhaps the most lifelike picture of maidenhood in the whole range of our literature. Or is not the following the portrait of an English girl, all life and all innocence--a type not belonging, like its opposite, to any "period" in particular--? I saw her dance so comelily, Carol and sing so sweetely, And laugh, and play so womanly, And looke so debonairly, So goodly speak and so friendly, That, certes, I trow that nevermore Was seen so blissful a treasure. For every hair upon her head, Sooth to say, it was not red, Nor yellow neither, nor brown it was, Methought most like gold it was. And ah! what eyes my lady had, Debonair, goode, glad and sad, Simple, of good size, not too wide. Thereto her look was not aside. Nor overthwart; but so well set that, whoever beheld her was drawn and taken up by it, every part of him. Her eyes seemed every now and then as if she were inclined to be merciful, such was the delusion of fools: a delusion in very truth, for It was no counterfeited thing; It was her owne pure looking; So the goddess, dame Nature, Had made them open by measure And close; for were she never so glad, Not foolishly her looks were spread, Nor wildely, though that she play'd; But ever, methought, her eyen said: "By God, my wrath is all forgiven." And at the same time she liked to live so happily that dulness was afraid of her; she was neither too "sober" nor too glad; in short, no creature had over more measure in all things. Such was the lady whom the knight had won for himself, and whose virtues he cannot weary of rehearsing to himself or to a sympathising auditor.