Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
(General Prologue, 1–12)
These are the opening lines with which the narrator begins the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales. The imagery
in this opening passage is of spring’s renewal and rebirth. April’s sweet showers have penetrated the dry earth of March,
hydrating the roots, which in turn coax flowers out of the ground. The constellation Taurus is in the sky; Zephyr, the
warm, gentle west wind, has breathed life into the fields; and the birds chirp merrily. The verbs used to describe Nature’s
actions—piercing (2), engendering (4), inspiring (5), and pricking (11)—conjure up images of conception.
The natural world’s reawakening aligns with the narrator’s similarly “inspired” poetic sensibility. The classical (Latin
and Ancient Greek) authors that Chaucer emulated and wanted to surpass would always begin their epic narrative poems
by invoking a muse, or female goddess, to inspire them, quite literally to talk or breathe a story into them. Most of them
begin “Sing in me, O muse,” about a particular subject. Chaucer too begins with a moment of inspiration, but in this case
it is the natural inspiration of the earth readying itself for spring rather than a supernatural being filling the poet’s body
with her voice.

After the long sleep of winter, people begin to stir, feeling the need to “goon on pilgrimages,” or to travel to a site where
one worships a saint’s relics as a means of spiritual cleansing and renewal. Since winter ice and snow made traveling long
distances almost impossible (this was an age not only before automobiles but also before adequately developed horse-
drawn carriages), the need to get up, stretch one’s legs, and see the world outside the window must have been great.
Pilgrimages combined spring vacations with religious purification.
The landscape in this passage also clearly situates the text in England. This is not a classical landscape like the Troy of
Homer’s Iliad, nor is it an entirely fictionalized space like the cool groves and rocky cliffs of imaginary Arcadia from
pastoral poetry and romances. Chaucer’s landscape is also accessible to all types of people, but especially those who
inhabit the countryside, since Chaucer speaks of budding flowers, growing crops, and singing birds.

The opening lines of the Canterbury Tales constitute a learned version of the "reverdi," a simple lyric celebrating the
return of Spring after the harshness of winter, a common form of medieval French lyric. It became widespread in English
as well. widespread in English as well. The most famous example in is the "Cuckoo song," which dates from the twelfth
century:

Sumer is i-comen in.

Groweth seed and bloweth meed
And springth the wude nu.
Sing cuccu!

In all probability, little songs like this go back to earliest antiquity -- the reassuring return of vegetation and fertility, and
of the sun -- especially in Northern Europe - - after the cold and dark winter.

The standard love lyric builds upon this return of spring song by adding human love. Spring brings a great outburst of
energy in nature, the birds begin to sing again, and nature stirs its creatures to love:

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,

The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again!

When Spring arrives, love comes with it. Here is a typical opening of a lover's complaint:

When the nightingale singes

The wodes waxen grene,
Leaf and gras and blossom springes
In Averil, I wene,
And love is to min herte gon
With a spere so keen.

And on then into the story of his love.

These are all in the background of Chaucer's opening lines, echoing in the minds of his listeners. There is in the opening
lines of the Canterbury tales a kind of celebration of fertility, the same joyful welcome to spring that we have in Sumer
is icomen in, and it has all the elements of the conventional first stanza of the love lyric -- the singing bird, the springing
flower, and the time -- April or May, early spring.

Chaucer's first surviving work was a translation of The Romance of the Rose, or a good part of it, into English. And that
poem itself defined the high courtly style. The dream vision conventions used in The Romance of the Rose include the
obligatory description of spring as it is set forth in the opening of the Roman de la rose. There the brief amatory reverdie
which can be seen in the poem "When the nightigale singes." is greatly elaborated.

That it was May thus dremed me

In time of love and jollite
That al thyng gynneth waxen gay
For there is neither busk nor hay
In May that it nyl shrouded ben,
And it with new leves wryen. cover
These greves eke recoveren grene,
That dry in wynter ben to sen,
And the erthe waxeth proude withal
For swete dewes that on it falle . . .

And the birds begin to sing:

To make noyse and syngen blythe

Than is blisful many sithe
The chelandre and popinjay
Then yonge folk entended ay
For to ben gay and amorous

It is the same movement we saw in When the Nightingale Sings -- the time is spring, the flowers bloom, the birds sing,
and then young love. All these elements, even love, are in this opening sentence of the Canterbury Tales -- the Spring
setting, the birds, the flowers, the impulse toward love, all elegantly elaborated in the style of The Romaunt of the Rose.

To this Chaucer adds another tradition of the celebration of Spring, that of the learned Latin tradition. Chaucer does not
simply tell you that the dews fell on the earth as Guillaume does. He gives instead a brief scientific description, telling
how the dews engender the virtues -- which means powers -- which are the humours that will produce the flowers. Here
is how Spring was described in an actual scientific Treatise, Vincent of Beauvais' thirteenth-century encyclopaedia of
Natural History. It was a work that Chaucer knew very well and of which may even have owned a copy:

Indeed the sun penetrating to the roots of grasses and plants, draws out the freezing humour which winter had
brought, and the grasses and plants, feeling their emptiness, draw in the humour of the earth, which adding to it
the heat of its own humour, the heat of the sun transmits it to the plants, and thus they are revived and grow
green; whence it is that this month is called April, since this is when the earth is opened -- aperitur.

Or, somewhat more poetically, but still scientifically, here is Bartholomaeus Anglicus, as translated by Chaucer's
contemporary John Trevisa:

The pores of the earth are opened, and humours begin to move upwards in beasts, trees, and man . . . and therefore
April is painted with a flower, for in that month April the earth hath that beginning to be clothed and adorned
with flowers.

Chaucer not only says it is April, he defines the time by exact reference to the Cosmos -- to the young sun just emerging
from the zodiacal sign of the Ram, so that the action takes place in a grand cosmic setting -- on earth, surrounded by the
nine spheres -- the seven planets, the fixed stars, the primum mobile, all moving in a harmony produced by the
reconciliation of opposites, the music of the spheres. Chaucer learned this from Latin literature, and when he wrote the
opening lines of Troilus he may even been thinking directly of this passage from a work by Guido delle Colonne, the
Historia Troiae, a work which Chaucer read and used in writing his own story of Troy, Troilus and Criseyde:

It was the time when the young son (maturans sol), making its course under the oblique circle of the zodiac was
now entering the Ram . . . the equinox of the first spring was celebrated, when the time of gentle and serene air
comes to mortals, than when Zephyrus brings the soft waters of rain, and when the moisture is drawn from the
bosom of the earth up into the high branches of the trees, the leaves grow, the fields turn green . . . the birds sing
and produce the sweetest harmonies, then when we are in the midst of April.