Chaucer

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

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 plowed field or flowery mead.