Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue 01: Introduction - (A Minimalist Translation) Poem by Forrest Hainline

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales: General Prologue 01: Introduction - (A Minimalist Translation)

When that April with his shower's soote
The drought of March has pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such liquor
Of which virtue engendered is the flower;
When Zephyrus eek with his sweet breath
Inspired has in every holt and heath
The tender crops, and the young sun
Has in the Ram his half course run,
And small fowls making melody,
That sleep all the night with open eye
(So pricks them Nature in their corages) :
Then long folk to go on pilgrimages
And palmers for to seek strange strands,
To foreign hallways, known in sundry lands;
And specially, from every shire's end
Of England, to Canterbury they wend,
The holy blissful martyr for to seek
That them has helped, when that they were sick.

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Forrest Hainline