assembly, like some human Parliaments, breaks up with shouting;

(Than all the birdis song with sic a schout
That I annone awoik quhair that I lay
Dunbar, "The Thrissil and the Rois.")

and the dreamer awakes to resume his reading.

Very possibly the "Assembly of Fowls" was at no great interval of time
either followed or preceded by two poems of far inferior interest--the
"Complaint of Mars" (apparently afterwards amalgamated with that of
"Venus"), which is supposed to be sung by a bird on St. Valentine's
morning, and the fragment of "Queen Anelida and false Arcite." There are,
however, reasons which make a less early date probable in the case of the
latter production, the history of the origin and purpose of which can
hardly be said as yet to be removed out of the region of mere speculation.
In any case, neither of these poems can be looked upon as preparations, on
Chaucer's part, for the longer work on which he was to expend so much
labour; but in a sense this description would apply to the translation
which, probably before he wrote "Troilus and Cressid," certainly before he
wrote the Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women," he made of the famous
Latin work of Boethius, "the just man in prison," on the "Consolation of
Philosophy." This book was, and very justly so, one of the favourite
manuals of the Middle Ages, and a treasure-house of religious wisdom to
centuries of English writers. "Boice of Consolacioun" is cited in the
"Romaunt of the Rose"; and the list of passages imitated by Chaucer from
the martyr of Catholic orthodoxy and Roman freedom of speech is
exceedingly long. Among them are the ever-recurring diatribe against the
fickleness of fortune, and (through the medium of Dante) the reflection on
the distinction between gentle birth and a gentle life. Chaucer's