e Black Knight's description of his lost lady as she was at the
time when he wooed and almost despaired of winning her. Many of the
touches in this description--and among them some of the very
happiest--are, it is true, borrowed from the courtly Machault; but
nowhere has Chaucer been happier, both in his appropriations and in the
way in which he has really converted them into beauties of his own,
than in this, perhaps the most lifelike picture of maidenhood in the
whole range of our literature. Or is not the following the portrait of
an English girl, all life and all innocence--a type not belonging, like
its opposite, to any "period" in particular--?

I saw her dance so comelily,
Carol and sing so sweetely,
And laugh, and play so womanly,
And looke so debonairly,
So goodly speak and so friendly,
That, certes, I trow that nevermore
Was seen so blissful a treasure.
For every hair upon her head,
Sooth to say, it was not red,
Nor yellow neither, nor brown it was,
Methought most like gold it was.
And ah! what eyes my lady had,
Debonair, goode, glad and sad,
Simple, of good size, not too wide.
Thereto her look was not aside.
Nor overthwart;

but so well set that, whoever beheld her was drawn and taken up by it,
every part of him. Her eyes seemed every now and then as if she were
inclined to be merciful, such was the delusion of fools: a delusion in
very truth, for

It was no counterfeited thing;
It was her owne pure looking;
So the goddess, dame Nature,
Had made them open by measure
And close; for were she never so glad,
Not foolishly her looks were spread,
Nor wildely, though that she play'd;
But ever, methought, her eyen said:
"By God, my wrath is all forgiven."

And at the same time she liked to live so happily that dulness was
afraid of her; she was neither too "sober" nor too glad; in short, no
creature had over more measure in all things. Such was the lady whom
the knight had won for himself, and whose virtues he cannot weary of
rehearsing to himself or to a sympathising auditor.

"Sir!" quoth I, "where is she now?"
"Now?" quoth he, and stopped anon;
Therewith he waxed as dead as stone,
And said: "Alas that I was bore!
That was the loss! and heretofore
I told to thee what I had lost.
Bethink thee what I said. Thou know'st
In sooth full little what thou meanest:
I have lost more than thou weenest.
God wot, alas! right that was