BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1880

Copyright, 1879,

BY HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO.

All rights reserved.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

The Cuckow and the Nightingale, or the Boke of Cupide,

God of Love

A Goodly Ballade of Chaucer

A Praise of Women

• 554

565

• 568

THE HOUSE OF FAME.1

4

FIRST BOOK.

Proem.

GOD turne us every dreme to goode ! For hyt is wonder, be the Roode,2

To my wytte, what causeth swevenes

Eyther on morwes, or on evenes ;

And why theffecte folweth of somme,
And of somme hit shal never come;
Why that is an avisioun,

And why this a revelacioun ;

8

Why this a dreme, why that a swevene,
And noght to every man lyche evene;
Why this a fantome, why these oracles,
I not but who-so of these meracles
The causes knoweth bet then I,
Devyne he; for I certenly

Ne kan hem noght, ne never thinke
To besely my wytte to swinke,*

ΙΟ

1 Professor Bernhard Ten Brink, in his Studien, pp. 89-94, points out the suggestions that Chaucer derived for this poem from Dante, and says that the general plot is imitated from the Divina Commedia. The coincidences are indicated in the notes. A number of lines also resemble passages in Virgil's Eneid and in Ovid's Metamorphoses. ? Holy Rood 3 Visions. 4 Belabor.