Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Chaucer. Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. 1922. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse

Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.

Chaucer

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)


AN OLD man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark	5
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age	10
Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
Of lark and linnet, and from every page
Rise odours of plough’d field or flowery mead.