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 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 odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
Composition Date:1873.
The lyrical form of this poem is abbaabbacdecde.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.
