sabavon: valentine poems for lovers

Saturday, November 19, 2011

valentine poems for lovers

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The poem begins with the narrator reading Cicero's Somnium Scipionis in the hope of learning some "certeyn thing." When he falls asleep Scipio Africanus appears and guides him up through the celestial spheres to Venus's temple, after some deliberation at the gate both promising a "welle of grace" and a stream that "ledeth to the sorweful were/ Ther as a fissh in prison is al drye" (Reminiscent of Dante's "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"). The narrator then passes through Venus's dark temple with its friezes of doomed lovers and out into the bright sunlight where Nature is convening a parliament at which the birds all choose their mates. There three tercel eagles make their case for the hand of a formel eagle until the birds of the lower estates begin to protest and launch into a comic parliamentary debate, which Nature herself finally ends. None of the tercels wins the formel, for at her request Nature allows her to put off her decision for another year (indeed, female birds of prey often become sexually mature at one year of age, males only at two years). Nature allows the other birds, however, to pair off. The dream ends with a song welcoming the new summer. The dreamer awakes, still unsatisfied, and returns to his books, hoping still to learn the thing for which he seeks.

Valentine For Lovers

William Caxton's early print of 1478 is also considered authoritative, for it reproduces the text of a manuscript now considered lost. The stemma and genealogy of these authorities was studied by John Koch in 1881, and later established by Eleanor Prescott Hammond in 1902, dividing them into two main groups, A and B (last five MSS), although the stemma is by no means definitive.

Happy Valentines

Concerning the author of the poem, there is no doubt that it was written by Geoffrey Chaucer, for so he tells us twice in his works.