Froissart, lasted a year--her hand was given to the young King Richard II
of England. This sufficiently explains the general scope of the "Assembly
of Fowls," an allegorical poem written on or about St. Valentine's Day,
1381--eleven months or nearly a year after which date the marriage took
place. On the morning sacred to lovers the poet (in a dream, of course,
and this time conducted by the arch-dreamer Scipio in person) enters a
garden containing in it the temple of the god of Love, and filled with
inhabitants mythological and allegorical. Here he sees the noble goddess
Nature, seated upon a hill of flowers, and around her "all the fowls that
be," assembled as by time honoured custom on St. Valentine's Day, "when
every fowl comes there to choose her mate." Their huge noise and hubbub
is reduced to order by Nature, who assigns to each fowl its proper place--
the birds of prey highest; then those that eat according to natural
inclination--

--worm or thing of which I tell no tale;

then those that live by seed; and the various members of the several
classes are indicated with amusing vivacity and point, from the royal
eagle "that with his sharp look pierceth the sun," and "other eagles of a
lower kind" downwards. We can only find room for a portion of the
company:--

The sparrow, Venus' son; the nightingale
That clepeth forth the fresh leaves new;
The swallow, murd'rer of the bees small,
That honey make of flowers fresh of hue;
The wedded turtle, with his hearte true;
The peacock, with his angels' feathers bright,
The pheasant, scorner of the cock by night.