“When shourés sote of rain descended soft, Causing the ground felé times and oft Up for to give many a wholesome air, And every plainé was y-clothed fair “With newé green, and maketh smallé flow’rs To springen here and there in field and mead So very good and wholesome be the show’rs, That they renewen that was old and dead In winter time, and out of every seed Springeth the herbé, so that every wight Of this seasón waxeth right glad and light. ... “Up I rose three hourés after twelfe About the springing of the gladsome day, And on I put my gear and mine array, And to a pleasant grove I ’gan to pass Long ere the brighté sun uprisen was; “In which were oakés great, straight as a line, Under the which the grass so fresh of hue Was newly sprung; and an eight foot or nine Evéry tree well from his fellow grew, With branches broad laden with leavés new, That sprungen out against the sunné sheen, Some very red, and some a glad light green, “Which (as me thought) was a right pleasant sight; And eke the birdés songés for to hear Would have rejoicéd any earthly wight; And I, that could not yet in no mannere Hearen the nightingale of all the year, Full busily heark’ned with heart and ear. If I her voice perceive could anywhere.” This is exactly the Chaucer landscape. The forest trees are described each after their kind; even the varieties of color of oak leaves in spring-time he notes, some coming out “very red,” some of a golden green hue—a fact not noticed, as far as I remember, by any other poet; the soft green grass, as soft as velvet under foot, he is never done praising; the note of each song-bird he knows and delights in. These, with here and there a quaint old garden described, such is the scenery in which his human portraits are inlaid. He is altogether one of the most amply descriptive of English poets till we arrive at quite recent times. And it is one sign of the permanence and stability of England, even amidst all change, that among the copsewoods of Kent and the lanes of Surrey just such scenes may be seen any spring-day now as Chaucer loved to describe nearly five hundred years ago. This unchanged landscape is everywhere in his poetry blended with the mediæval manners and costumes that have long since passed, as a modern poet, in phrase like Chaucer’s own, has well sung:— “He listeneth to the lark, Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass, in leaden lattice bound, He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound, Then writeth in a book like any clerk.” SHAKESPEARE.