Chaucer

How wayward oft appears the poet's fate,
Who still is born too early or too late !
If a bold, fond, imaginative age,
Instinct with amorous, and with martial rage,
Enact more wonders than the mind conceives,
And all that fancy can devise believes,
Produce a man by natural right a bard,
To whom long thought, and chance perplex'd and hard,
And books and men, and pensive cells and courts,
And politic lore, and trade, and knightly sports,
And, more than all, his own repented sin
Have shown the outer world and that within ; —
The fleeting language, to its trust untrue,
Vext by the jarring claims of old and new,
Defeats his beauty, makes his sense the fee
Of a blind, guessing, blundering glossary.
Thus Chaucer, quaintly clad in antique guise.
With unfamiliar mien scares modern eyes.
No doubt he well invented — nobly felt —
But, O ye powers ! how monstrously he spelt.
His syllables confound our critic men,
Who strive in vain to find exactly ten ;
And waste much learning to reduce his songs
To modish measurement of shorts and longs.
His language, too, unpolish'd and unfixt,
Of Norman, Saxon, Latin, oddly mixt —
Such words might please th' uneducated ears
That hail'd the blaring trumpets of Poictiers.
They shared the sable Edward's glee and glory.
And, like his conquests, they were transitory.
But how shall such old-fashion'd lingo cope
With polish, elegance, and Mister Pope ?

Yet, thou true Poet ! let no judgment wrong
Thy rich, spontaneous, many-colour'd song ;
Just mirror of a bold, ambitious age.
In passion furious, in reflection sage I —
An age of gorgeous sights and famous deeds.
And virtue more than peace admits or needs ;
When shiver'd lances were our ladies' sport,
And love itself assumed a lofty port ;
When every beast, and bird, and flower, and tree.
Convey'd a meaning and a mystery ;
And men in all degrees, sorts, ranks, and trades.
Knights, Palmers, Scholars, Wives, devoted Maids,
In garb, and speech, and manners, stood confest
To outward view, by hues and signs exprest,
And told their state and calling by their vest.