Blanche of Lancaster in 1359;--and an elaborate framework is constructed
round the essential theme of the poem. Already, however, the instinct of
Chaucer's own poetic genius had taught him the value of personal
directness; and, artificially as the course of the poem is arranged, it
begins in the most artless and effective fashion with an account given by
the poet of his own sleeplessness and its cause already referred to--an
opening so felicitous that it was afterwards imitated by Froissart. And
so, Chaucer continues, as he could not sleep, to drive the night away he
sat upright in his bed reading a "romance," which he thought better
entertainment than chess or draughts. The book which he read was the
"Metamorphoses" of Ovid; and in it he chanced on the tale of Ceyx and
Alcyone--the lovers whom, on their premature death, the compassion of Juno
changed into the seabirds that bring good luck to mariners. Of this story
(whether Chaucer derived it direct from Ovid, or from Machault's French
version is disputed), the earlier part serves as the introduction to the
poem. The story breaks off--with the dramatic abruptness in which Chaucer
is a master, and which so often distinguishes his versions from their
originals--at the death of Alcyone, caused by her grief at the tidings
brought by Morpheus of her husband's death. Thus subtly the god of sleep
and the death of a loving wife mingle their images in the poet's mind; and
with these upon him he falls asleep "right upon his book."

What more natural, after this, than the dream which came to him? It was
May, and he lay in his bed at morning-time, having been awakened out of
his slumbers by the "small fowls," who were carolling forth their notes--
"some high, some low, and all of one accord." The birds singing their
matins around the poet, and the sun shining brightly through his windows
stained with many a figure of poetic legend, and upon the walls painted in
fine colours "both text and gloss, and all the Romaunt of the Rose"--is
not this a picture of Chaucer by his own hand, on which, one may love to