Was as fresh as is the month of May; Schort was his goune, with sleevës long and wide, Well coude he sit on hors, and fairë ride. He coudë songës make and wel endite, Joust and eke dance, and wel portray and write. Then there comes the charming Prioress-- Ycleped Madame Eglantine. Ful well she sang the servicë divine, Entunëd in hir nose ful semëly: And Frensch she spak ful fair and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford attë Bowe, For Frensch of Paris was to hir unknowe. … Full fetys was her cloke, as I was waar Of smal coral aboute hir arme she baar A paire of bedës gauded all with grene, And thereon heng a broch of gold ful schene On which was first y-writ a crownéd A, And after--_Amor Vincit Omnia_! Then comes the Monk, who has a shiny pate, who is stout, well fed, pretentious; his very trappings make a portrait-- And when he rood, men might his bridel heere Gingling in a whistlyng wynd as cleere And eek as loude as doth the chapel belle. Again, there was a Friar--a wanton and a merry one--rollicksome, and loving rich houses only, ----who lispéd for his wantonnesse, To make his Englissch swete upon his tunge; His eyen twinkled in his hed aright As do the starrës in the frosty night. And among them all goes, with mincing step, the middle-aged, vulgar, well-preserved, coquettish, shrewish Wife of Bath: Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed, Ful streyte y-tied, and schoos ful moiste and newe, Bold was her face, and faire and reed of hewe. And so--on, and yet on--for the twenty or more; all touched with those little, life-like strokes which only genius can command, and which keep the breath in those old Pilgrims to Canterbury, as if they travelled there, between the blooming hedge rows, on every sunshiny day of every succeeding spring. I know that praise of these and of the way Chaucer marshals them at the Tabard, and starts them on their way, and makes them tell their stories, is like praise of June or of sunshine. All poets and all readers have spoken it ever since the morning they set out upon their journeyings; and many an American voyager of our day has found best illumination for that pleasant jaunt through County Kent toward the old towers of Canterbury in his recollections of Chaucer’s Pilgrims. It is true that the poet’s wayside marks are not close or strong; no more does a meteor leave other track than the memory of its brightness. We cannot fix of a surety upon the “ale-stake” where the Pardoner did “byten on a cake,” and there may be some doubt about the “litel” town which that y-cleped is, Bob-up-and-Down.