In his sleep comes the usual dream of the chamber decorated with works of mythological art (a stock feature, as in the "Roman de la Rose"), there is a hunting scene, with French terms of venery, and then Chaucer meets a mourner, John of Gaunt, whose long plaint and narration of similar sorrows in fable, with due reference to authorities, is prolix and pedantic, to a modern taste. This piece is in rhymed octosyllabic couplets. Other Early Poems. "The Compleynte unto Pite" (Pity) is the earliest of Chaucer's poems in "Rhyme Royal" (so called, some think, because James I of Scotland used it much later in "The King's Quhair," a far-fetched guess). The poet seeks Pity, and finds her dead; he adds the petition which he meant to have presented to her, that of a despairing lover. The ideas are hackneyed, and the piece is a mere exercise. The metre, later much used by Chaucer in narrative runs thus:-- This is to seyne, I wol be youres ever; Though ye me slee by Crueltee, your fo, Algate my spirit shal never dissever Fro your servyse, for any peyne or we. Sith ye be deed,--alias! that hit is so!-- Thus for your deth I may wel wepe and pleyne With herte sore and fill of besy peyne. The "A.B.C." is a hymn of prayer to Our Lady, each stanza beginning with each successive letter of the alphabet. It is an exercise in translation from a French original; the stanzas are shorter than in the French. "The Compleynte of Mars" tells of the wooing of a mediaeval Mars and Venus, interrupted by Apollo "with torche in honde"; the original source of the story is the song of the Phæacian minstrel in the "Odyssey," but that is humorous, while Chaucer is sympathetic; Mars asks poets not to make game of his passion, take hit noght a-game. The Phæacian singer did "take it a-game". "A Compleynte to his Lady" is of the conventional kind, and an exercise in metres.