CHAUCER

by: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

N 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

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

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.

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