Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.
-Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Prologue
2 comments:
This section will always remind me of the the summer after my 8th grade year, when I was enrolled in a program for nerds like me at the University of Denver. I took Geometry and Middle English; I think the entire summer was based on memorization- memorizing theorems, memorizing poems. And this was the first section we all had to memorize the first night, to get the DOWN-up DOWN-up DOWN-up rhythm that would so characterize our speech from then on. I loved that course, and our textbook (A Middle English Anthology) came with me to Wheaton each year. It almost made the cut to come to Kenya, and this morning I miss it...
I didn't know that! Neat. We memorized this my senior year in high school. It's been on my list of Things to Post, but I was saving it for April. 'Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages' seems especially relevant this Spring - I've been taking lots and lots of walks. I can easily imagine coming to the end of a long medieval winter and thinking, 'Hey - let's walk to Canterbury! It'll be fun!'.
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