Yet shall my spirit nevermore dissever
From your service, for any pain or woe,
Pity, whom I have sought so long ago!
Thus for your death I may well weep and plain,
With heart all sore, and full of busy pain.

If this poem be autobiographical, it would indisputably correspond well
enough to a period in Chaucer's life, and to a mood of mind preceding
those to which the introduction to the "Book of the Duchess" belongs. If
it be not autobiographical--and in truth there is nothing to prove it
such, so that an attempt has been actually made to suggest its having been
intended to apply to the experiences of another man--then the "Complaint
of Pity" has no special value for students of Chaucer, since its poetic
beauty, as there can be no harm in observing, is not in itself very great.

To come to an end of this topic, there seems no possibility of escaping
from one of the following alternatives. EITHER the Philippa Chaucer of
1366 was Geoffrey Chaucer's wife, whether or not she was Philippa Roet
before marriage, and the lament of 1369 had reference to another lady--an
assumption to be regretted in the case of a married man, but not out of
the range of possibility. OR--and this seems on the whole the most
probable view--the Philippa Chaucer of 1366 was a namesake whom Geoffrey
married some time after 1369, possibly, (of course only POSSIBLY,) the
very lady whom he had loved hopelessly for eight years, and persuaded
himself that he had at last relinquished--and who had then relented after
all. This last conjecture it is certainly difficult to reconcile with the
conclusion at which we arrive on other grounds, that Chaucer's married
life was not one of preponderating bliss. That he and his wife were
COUSINS is a pleasing thought, but one which is not made more pleasing by
the seeming fact that, if they were so related, marriage in their case