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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

Chaucer


              1An old man in a lodge within a park;
              2    The chamber walls depicted all around
              3    With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
              4    And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
              5Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
              6    Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
              7    He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
              8    Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
              9He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
            10    The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
            11    Made beautiful with song; and as I read
            12I hear the crowing cock, I hear the note
            13    Of lark and linnet, and from every page
            14    Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.

Notes

8] clerk: cleric.

10] Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400), whose Canterbury Tales occupied the last two decades of his life and was unfinished at his death.

13] linnet: finch.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Bibliographical and Critical Notes, Riverside Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890), III, 200. PS 2250 E90 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 1875
Publication date note: The Masque of Pandora (1875)
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 2:2002/1/24

Composition date: 1873
Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abbaabbacdecde

Other poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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