poet accosts him, and courteously demands his pardon for the intrusion.
Thereupon the disconsolate mourner, touched by this token of sympathy,
breaks out into the tale of his sorrow which forms the real subject of the
poem. It is a lament for the loss of a wife who was hard to gain (the
historical basis of this is unknown, but great heiresses are usually hard
to gain for cadets even of royal houses), and whom, alas! her husband was
to lose so soon after he had gained her. Nothing could be simpler, and
nothing could be more delightful than the Black Knight's description of
his lost lady as she was at the time when he wooed and almost despaired of
winning her. Many of the touches in this description--and among them some
of the very happiest--are, it is true, borrowed from the courtly Machault;
but nowhere has Chaucer been happier, both in his appropriations and in
the way in which he has really converted them into beauties of his own,
than in this, perhaps the most lifelike picture of maidenhood in the whole
range of our literature. Or is not the following the portrait of an
English girl, all life and all innocence--a type not belonging, like its
opposite, to any "period" in particular--?

I saw her dance so comelily,
Carol and sing so sweetely,
And laugh, and play so womanly,
And looke so debonairly,
So goodly speak and so friendly,
That, certes, I trow that nevermore
Was seen so blissful a treasure.
For every hair upon her head,
Sooth to say, it was not red,
Nor yellow neither, nor brown it was,
Methought most like gold it was.
And ah! what eyes my lady had,