That shone full sheen with gold and with azure,
Of many image that there was in picture,
He hath commanded to his officers,

Duly in honour of them that were strangers,
Spices and wine.

THOMAS OCCLEVE.

(1370 ?-1454.)

ANOTHER young contemporary and disciple of Chaucer was Thomas Occleve, a lawyer in London, and, for twenty years of his life, a writer to the Privy Seal. His works, produced chiefly in the reign of Henry V. (1413-1422), included La Male Regle (the Mis-rule) de T. Hoccleve, some devotional and occasional verses, and an English version of a Latin treatise of Egidius, a Roman writer of 1250, called De Regimine Principum (on the Art of Governing). In the Prologue to this poem occur some pathetic verses upon the death of Chaucer, written probably soon after the event, and incorporated some years later in the poem. Upon the margin of one of the MSS. of the De Regimine, now in the British Museum, Occleve painted his famous little coloured portrait of Chaucer. Few of Occleve's works have found their way into print. Even the De Regimine, the most important of them, exists only in manuscript; but its author will always hold a place among our early poets on account of his graceful and reverent homage to Chaucer, his "dear master and father."

FROM DE REGIMINE PRINCIPUM.

OCCLEVE'S LAMENT FOR CHAUCER.

My dearè master-God his soul acquit !—

And father, Chaucer, fain would have me taught ;
But I was dull, and learnèd lite1 or naught.
Alas, my worthy master honorable,
This landès very treasure and richesse,
Death, by thy death, hath harm irreparable
Unto us done: his vengeable duresse 2

Despoiled hath this land of the sweetness
Of rhetoric; for unto Tullius 1

Was never man so like amongest us.
Alas! who was there in philosophy
To 2 Aristotle in our tongue, but thou?
The steppès of Virgile in poesie

Thou suedest eke: 3 men knowè well enow
That cumber-world that hath my master slow.5
Wold I slain were! Death was too hastife 6
To run on thee and reave thee of thy life:
She might have tarried her vengeance a while
Till that some man had equal to thee be:
Nay, let that be: she knew well that this isle
May never man forth bring like unto thee;
And her of office needès do mote she;8
God bade her so, I trust for all the best.
O master, master, God thy soulè rest!

JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND.
(1394-1437.)

THIS Scottish prince was educated as a royal prisoner in England through the reigns of Henry IV. and Henry V. During his captivity he was an enthusiastic student of poetry, and at length himself produced one of the most graceful poems that exist in old English. The King's Quhair (King's Book) is written in the seven-lined stanza of Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide. The main incident of the Quhair is nearly identical with that of Chaucer's Knight's Tale, where the captive youths discover Emilie walking in the prison garden. It may have been that Chaucer's story, which was in its turn a reproduction of the Teseide of Boccaccio, together with the similarity, in some points, of his own fate to that of Palamon and Arcite, suggested to the young king the plot of the Quhair. The common story is, however, that the Beauty of James's prison-garden was the Lady Jane Beaufort, first cousin of Henry V., who became eventually Queen of Scot

1 Cicero.

3 Followedst also.

2 Equal to. 4 Encumbrance of the world, i.e. Death. 5 Slain.

6 Hasty.

land and mother of the royal line of the subsequent Stuarts. James's death, by assassination in 1437, thirteen years after his return to Scotland, cut short a life of rare promise; and the King's Quhair is the only literary work attributed with certainty to his pen. Although this poem may be called a close imitation of Chaucer, there are in it marks of independent genius, and a beautiful freedom of fancy and of language not to be found in other Chaucerian poems of that period.

FROM THE KING'S QUHAIR.

THE CAPTIVE KING.

Whereas in ward1 full oft I would bewail
My deadly life, full of pain and penance,
Saying right thus, "What have I guilt,2 to fail
My freedom in this world, and my pleasance?
Sin every wight 3 has thereof suffisance

That I behold, and I a creäture

Put from all this, hard is mine aventure!

The bird, the beast, the fish eke in the sea,
They live in freedom, every 5 in his kind,
And I a man, and lacketh liberty;
What shall I sayn, what reason may I find,
That Fortune should do so?" Thus in my mind
My folk I would argùe, but all for nought;
Was none that might that on my painès wrought.

THE PRISON-GARDEN.

Bewailing in my chamber thus alone,
Despaired of all joy and remedy,
Fortired of my thought, and wo-begone,
And to the window gan I walk in hie,8
To see the world and folk that went forby ;9
As, for the time, though I of mirthès food
Might have no more, to look it did me good.

Now was there made, fast by the Tower's wall,
A garden fair, and in the corners set

1 Prison.

2 Done guilty.

3 Since every being.

An herbere1 green, with wandès long and small
Railèd about; and so with treès set
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,2
That life was none walking therè forby,
That might within scarce any wight espy.1

4

So thick the boughès and the leavès green
Beshaded all the alleys that were there;
And middis every herbere might be seen
The sharpè, greenè, sweetè juniper,
Growing so fair, with branches here and there,
That, as it seemèd to a life without,
The boughès spread the herbere all about.

And on the smallè greenè twistis sat
The little sweetè nightingale, and sung
So loud and clear the hymnès consecrat
Of Love's use; now soft, now loud among,
That all the gardens and the wallès rung
Right of their song..

...

"Worship, ye that lovers been, this May,
For of your bliss the kalends are begun ;
And sing with us, 'Away, winter away!
Come, summer, come, the sweet season and sun!'
Awake, for shame, that have your heavens won,
And amorously lift up your headès all;

Thank Love, that list you to his mercy call."

When they this song had sung a little thraw,7
They stents a while, and therewith, unaffrayed,
As I beheld and cast mine eyne alaw,9

From bough to bough they hippèd 10 and they played,
And freshly in their birdès kind arrayed

Their feathers new, and fret them in the sun,
And thanked Love that had their matès won.

A FIRST LOVE.

Oft would I think, " O Lord, what may this be
That Love is: of so noble might and kind
Loving his folk? And such prosperity
Is it of him as we in bookès find?

May he our heartès setten and unbind?

1 Woody retreat, from Herbarium. 4 Compare Chaucer, ante, p. 28.

2 Knitted close.
6 Twigs.

5 Amid.

3 Living person. 7 A little time.

Hath he upon our hearts such mastery,
Or is all this but feignèd phantasy?

"And, gif he be of so great excellence
That he of every wight hath care and charge,
What have I guilt to him, or done offence,
That I am thrall and birdès gone at large,
Sin him to serve he might set my courage?
And, gif he be not so, then may I sayn,
What makes folk to jangle of him in vain?"...

And therewith cast I down mine eye again,
Where as I saw, walking under the Tower
Full secretly, new comen her to playn,1
The fairest and the freshest youngè flower
That ever I saw, methought, before that hour:
For which sudden abate 2 anon astart 3
The blood of all my body to my heart. . . .
And in my head I drew right hastily,
And eft soones I leaned it out again,
And saw her walk that very womanly,
With no wight now, but only women twain.
Then gan I study in myself, and sayn,

66

5

Ah, sweet! are ye a worldly creäture,
Or heavenly thing in likeness of nature?

"Gif" ye a goddess be, and that ye like
To do me pain, I may not it astart ;7
Gif ye be worldly wight, that doth me sike,3
Why list God make you so, my dearest heart,
To do a silly prisoner thus smart

That loves you all, and wot1o of nought but woe!
And, therefore, mercy sweet! sin it is so!"

When I a little thraw 11 had made my moan,
Bewailing my infortune and my chance,
Unknowing how or what was best to done,12
So far I fallen into love's dance

That suddenly my wit, my countenance,

My heart, my will, my nature, and my mind,
Were changed clean right in ane other kind.

Of her array the form gif I shall write,
Toward her golden hair, and rich attire,

4 Soon after.

8 Maketh me to sigh.