"It suffyceth me, as I were dedd, That no wight have my name in honde, I wot myself best how I stonde."
The "Legend of Good Women" was written in praise of all those maidens and wives who loved truly and unchangingly.
Hitherto Chaucer, whose married life was not an altogether happy one, had sung but little of love in its highest, purest form. But here, in a prologue sparkling and radiant as the morning he describes, he tells us how he went out to greet the daisy, the flower he loved, and would ever love anew till his heart did die.
"Kneeling alway, til it uncloséd was Upon the swetë, softë, swotë gras That was with flourës swote embroidered all.
In his dream there came to him the God of Love, with his queen, Alcestis, who, daisy-like, was clad in royal habits green--
"A fret of golde she hedde next her heer, And upon that a white courone she beer."
She it was who made him swear that from henceforth he would "poetize of wommen trewe in lovying," "speke wel of love," and so make a glorious legend.
Chaucer had intended writing at least nineteen stories on the lines decreed by Alcestis, but his days of prosperity had come to an end for the time being, with the exile of John of Gaunt, and he became so poor after his dismissal from the Customs, that he had to raise money on his pension. And so the legend seems to have been laid aside.
When Henry of Lancaster became king five years later, he doubled the pension, remembering how his father, just dead, had loved the poet; and so the cloud, which had been heavy enough while it lasted, passed away. But it is to those dark days that we owe the greatest of all Chaucer's work--his "Canterbury Tales"--work, it must be remembered, which rings and re-rings with cheerfulness, courage, sympathy, and kindliness. We know so little of Chaucer as a man but this one fact stands out, that he never allowed his own troubles or anxieties, or even his pressing poverty, to over-cloud his heart or his mind. For him the sun shone always, though he saw it not, and because of that sunshine no trace of bitterness or harshness is to be found in his work.