of sound, to the House of Fame (Rumour, but also Poetry), a bewildering place
described in Book III. The poem breaks off as Chaucer meets a man whose name he
cannot give: ‘But he semed for to be / A man of gret auctorite ....’The Parlement of Fowls
Chaucer’s first completed work is a dream, his second a broken dream; his next,The
Parlement of Fowls, is a dream ending in a puzzle. The poet seeks to understand Love,
which, so books say, has bewildering effects. He has been reading Cicero’s Scipio’s
Dream, in which Scipio explains how the immortal soul can attain the heavens only
by working for the common good. Chaucer sleeps, and dreams of Scipio, who takes
him to a paradisal Garden of Love, containing a dark Temple of Venus. Out in the
Garden, the goddess Nature presides over the Parliament of Birds: it is St Valentine’s
Day, when fowls, birds, choose their mates. Three noble eagles seek the hand of a
beautiful female, the formel, each protesting that he will die if she will not have him.
The common birds lose patience, the goose saying: ‘But [unless] she wol love hym,
lat hym love another.’ When the sparrowhawk says that this is the remark of a goose,
‘the laughter aros of gentil fowles alle’. ‘ “Nay, God forbede, a lovere shulde chaunge!”
/ The turtle [dove] seyde, and wex for shame al red.’ The duck and cuckoo mock this
gentil sentiment, the noble birds of prey defend it. Nature calls a halt and asks the
formel to decide. ‘If I were Resoun’, she says, I’d counsel you to take the royal eagle.
But the formel, granted a free choice, speaks as follows: ‘Almyghty queen! unto this
yer be gon, / I axe respit for to avise me, / And after that to have my choys al fre
....’
The formel uses here the words with which the king declined a Bill presented by
Parliament:le roi s’avisera, ‘the king will think it over’. She ‘wol nat serve Venus ne
Cupide,/ Forsothe as yit ....’Nature dismisses the Parliament. The birds, except for
the royal eagles, embrace their mates.
But fyrst were chosen foules for to synge,
As yer by yer was alwey hir usaunce their
To synge a roundel at here departynge, their
To don to Nature honour and plesaunce.
The note, I trowe, imaked was in Fraunce, tune believe
The wordes were swiche as ye may heer fynde,
The nexte vers, as I now have in mynde.
‘Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,
That hast this wintres wedres overshake storms shaken off
And driven away the longe nyghtes blake.’
The roundel inter laces its verses, ending with the lines with which it began.
And with the shouting, whan the song was do done
That foules maden at here flyght awey, their
I wok, and othere bokes tok me to,
To reed upon, and yit I rede alwey.
I hope, ywis, to rede so som day
That I shale mete som thyng for to fare dream so as to get on
The bet, and thus to rede I nyl nat spare. better
The poet, awakened by the dawn chorus, returns to his books.The Parlement has
philosophy, a love-vision, a beast-fable, a debate, and a light and intriguing manner.
Chaucer mixes genres and attitudes: he is a bookworm seeking enlightenment about58 2 · MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: 1066–1500