No More Learning

"

"8th November . . . William worked at 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale'
till he was tired. "

"Wednesday, December 9th. I read 'Palemon and Arcite', William writing
out his alterations of Chaucer's 'Cuckoo and Nightingale'. "

The question as to whether 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale' was written
by Chaucer or not, may be solved either way without affecting the
literary value of Wordsworth's "modernisation" of it. --Ed. ]


[Footnote B: In 'The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernised'. --Ed. ]


[Footnote C:

"In 'The Cuckoo and Nightingale', a poem of the third of May--a date
corresponding to the mid-May, the very heart of May according to our
modern reckoning--the poet after a wakeful night rises, and goes forth
at dawn, and comes to a 'laund' or plain 'of white and green. '

'So feire oon had I nevere in bene,
The grounde was grene, y poudred with dayse,
The floures and the gras ilike al hie,
Al grene and white, was nothing elles sene. '

Nothing seen but the short green grass and the white daisies,--grass
and daisies being of equal height. Unfortunately in Tyrwhitt's text
the description is nonsensical,

'The flowres and the greves like hie. '

The daisy flowers are as high as the _groves_!
Wordsworth retained the
groves, but refused to make daisies of equal height with them.

'Tall were the flowers, the grove a lofty cover,
All green and white; and nothing else was seen. '"

(Professor Dowden, in the 'Transactions of the Wordsworth Society'. No.
III. )--Ed. ]


[Footnote D:

"In Chaucer's poem, after 'the cuckoo, bird unholy,' has said his evil
say, the Nightingale breaks forth 'so lustily,'

'That with her clere voys she made rynge
Thro out alle the grene wode wide,'

Wordsworth has taken a poet's licence with these lines:

'I heard the lusty Nightingale so sing,
That her clear voice made 'a loud rioting',
Echoing through all the green wood wide. '

This 'loud rioting' is Wordsworth's, not Chaucer's; and it belongs, as
it were, to that other passage of his:

'O Nightingale, thou surely art
A creature of a fiery heart,
These notes of thine--they pierce and pierce;
Tumultuous harmony and fierce!
Thou sing'st as if the God of wine
Had helped thee to a Valentine. '"

(Professor Dowden, in the 'Transactions of the Wordsworth Society', No.
III. )--Ed. ]


[Footnote E: From a manuscript in the Bodleian, as are also stanzas 44
and 45--W. W.

(1841), which are necessary to complete the sense--W. W.