* * * * *

Let us leave prose for a moment, and see how Verse threw its bridge over the gap.  If you would hear the note of Chaucer at its deepest, you will find it in the famous exquisite lines of the Prioress’ Prologue:—­

     O moder mayde!  O mayde moder fre! 
     O bush unbrent, brenning in Moyses’ sight!

in the complaint of Troilus, in the rapture of Griselda restored to her children:—­

     O tendre, O dere, O yonge children myne,
     Your woful moder wende stedfastly
     That cruel houndes or some foul vermyne
     Hadde eten you; but God of his mercy
     And your benigne fader tendrely
     Hath doon you kept...

You will find a note quite as sincere in many a carol, many a ballad, of that time:—­

     He came al so still
     There his mother was,
     As dew in April
     That falleth on the grass.

     He came al so still
     To his mother’s bour,
     As dew in April
     That falleth on the flour.

     He came al so still
     There his mother lay,
     As dew in April
     That falleth on the spray.

     Mother and maiden
     Was never none but she;
     Well may such a lady
     Goddes mother be.

You get the most emotional note of the Ballad in such a stanza as this, from “The Nut-Brown Maid":—­

     Though it be sung of old and young
       That I should be to blame,
     Their’s be the charge that speak so large
       In hurting of my name;
     For I will prove that faithful love
       It is devoid of shame;
     In your distress and heaviness
       To part with you the same: 
     And sure all tho that do not so
       True lovers are they none: 
     For, in my mind, of all mankind
       I love but you alone.

All these notes, again, you will admit to be exquisite:  but they gush straight from the unsophisticated heart:  they are nowise deep save in innocent emotion:  they are not thoughtful.  So when Barbour breaks out in praise of Freedom, he cries

     A!  Fredome is a noble thing!

And that is really as far as he gets.  He goes on

     Fredome mayse man to hafe liking.

(Freedom makes man to choose what he likes; that is, makes him free)

     Fredome all solace to man giffis,
     He livis at ese that frely livis! 
     A noble hart may haif nane ese,
     Na ellys nocht that may him plese,
     Gif fredome fail’th:  for fre liking
     Is yharnit ouer all othir thing...

—­and so on for many lines; all saying the same thing, that man yearns for Freedom and is glad when he gets it, because then he is free; all hammering out the same observed fact, but all knocking vainly on the door of thought, which never opens to explain what Freedom is.