The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer

How fain we conjure back his smile! How fainAs, bow’d with musings long on elvish lore,He clutched his satchel at the class-room doorAnd shot the quick “Good-morning, gentlemen,”From under the bronze curls, and entered. ThenFor us that hour of quaint illusion woreSuch spell as when, beside the Breton shore,The wizard clerk astounded Dorigen.For we beheld the nine and twenty rideThrough those dim aisles their deathless pilgrimage,Lady and monk and rascal laugh and chide,Living and loving on the enchanted page,Whilst, half apart, there murmured side by sideThe master-poet and the scholar-mage.

“For this ye knowen al-so wel as I,Who-so shal telle a tale after a man,He moot reherce, as ny as ever he can,Everich a word, if it be in his charge,Al speke he never so rudeliche and large;Or elles he moot telle his tale untrewe,Or feyne thing, or finde wordes newe.”

“Call up him that left half-toldThe story of Cambuscan bold.”