rk.

Perhaps the best poem of this period is the "Dethe of Blanche the
Duchesse," better known, as the "Boke of the Duchesse," a poem of
considerable dramatic and emotional power, written after the death of
Blanche, wife of Chaucer's patron, John of Gaunt. Additional poems are the
"Compleynte to Pite," a graceful love poem; the "A B C," a prayer to the
Virgin, translated from the French of a Cistercian monk, its verses
beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet; and a number of what
Chaucer calls "ballads, roundels, and virelays," with which, says his
friend Gower, "the land was filled." The latter were imitations of the
prevailing French love ditties.

SECOND PERIOD. The chief work of the second or Italian period is _Troilus
and Criseyde_, a poem of eight thousand lines. The original story was a
favorite of many authors during the Middle Ages, and Shakespeare makes use
of it in his _Troilus and Cressida_. The immediate source of Chaucer's poem
is Boccaccio's _Il Filostrato,_ "the love-smitten one"; but he uses his
material very freely, to reflect the ideals of his own age and society, and
so gives to the whole story a dramatic force and beauty which it had never
known before.

The "Hous of Fame" is one of Chaucer's unfinished poems, having the rare
combination of lofty thought and simple, homely language, showing the
influence of the great Italian master. In the poem the author is carried
away in a dream by a great eagle from the brittle temple of Venus, in a
sandy wilderness, up to the hall of fame. To this house come all rumors of
earth, as the sparks fly upward. The house stands on a rock of ice

writen ful of names
Of folk that hadden grete fames.

Many of these have disappeared as the ice melted; but the older names are
clear as when first written. For many of his ideas Chaucer is indebted to
Dante, Ovid, and Virgil; but the unusual conception and the splendid
workmanship are all his own.

The third great poem of the period is the _Legende of Goode Wimmen_. As he
is resting in the fields among the daisies, he falls asleep and a gay
procession draws near. First comes the love god, leading by the hand
Alcestis, model of all wifely virtues, whose emblem is the daisy; and
behind them follow a troup of glorious women, all of whom have been
faithful in love. They gather about the poet; the god upbraids him for
having translated the _Romance of the Rose_, and for his early poems
refl