and bright as any gold,
      He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old. 
      His longe here was kempt behind his bak,
      As any ravenes fether it shone for blake. 
      A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight,
      Upon his hed sate full of stones bright,
      Of fine rubins [sic] and of diamants. 
      About his char ther wenten white alauns,
      Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere,
      To hunten at the leon or the dere,
      And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound.—­
        With Arcita, in stories as men find,
      The grete Emetrius, the king of Inde,
      Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
      Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
      Came riding like the god of armes Mars. 
      His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars,
      Couched with perles, white, and round and grete. 
      His sadel was of brent gold new ybete;
      A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging
      Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling. 
      His crispe here like ringes was yronne,
      And that was yelwe, and glitered as the Sonne. 
      His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin,
      His lippes round, his colour was sanguin,
      A fewe fraknes in his face yspreint,
      Betwixen yelwe and blake somdel ymeint,
      And as a leon he his loking caste. 
      Of five and twenty yere his age I caste. 
      His berd was wel begonnen for to spring;
      His vois was as a trompe thondering. 
      Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene
      A gerlond freshe and lusty for to sene. 
      Upon his hond he bare for his deduit
      An egle tame, as any lily whit.—­
      About this king ther ran on every part
      Ful many a tame leon and leopart.”

What a deal of terrible beauty there is contained in this description!  The imagination of a poet brings such objects before us, as when we look at wild beasts in a menagerie; their claws are pared, their eyes glitter like harmless lightning; but we gaze at them with a pleasing awe, clothed in beauty, formidable in the sense of abstract power.

Chaucer’s descriptions of natural scenery possess the same sort of characteristic excellence, or what might be termed gusto.  They have a local truth and freshness, which gives the very feeling of the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground.  Inanimate objects are thus made to have a fellow-feeling in the interest of the story; and render back the sentiment of the speaker’s mind.  One of the finest parts of Chaucer is of this mixed kind.  It is the beginning of the Flower and the Leaf, where he describes the delight of that young beauty, shrowded in her bower, and listening, in the morning of the year, to the singing of the nightingale; while her joy rises with the rising song, and gushes out afresh at every pause, and is borne along with the full tide of pleasure, and still increases, and repeats, and prolongs itself, and knows no ebb.  The coolness of the arbour, its retirement, the early time of the day, the sudden starting up of the birds in the neighbouring bushes, the eager delight with which they devour and rend the opening buds and flowers, are expressed with a truth and feeling, which make the whole appear like the recollection of an actual scene: