April arrives with another visit to Geoffrey Chaucer's Tabard Inn.
In the General Prologue of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales,", the pilgrims are gathered for their journey from London to Canterbury, to seek healing at the shrine of the murdered martyr St. Thomas Becket.
Written 600 years ago, the epic poem's opening hymn to April and introduction of characters possess an enduring immediacy. I imagine myself among the Knight, the Wife of Bath, the Squire and the others.
Viewing Chaucer's small tomb at Westminster Abbey, I thought about how alive the poem is.
In 1400, London was a small city, with a high mortality rate. Disease, famine, fire and violence were constant threats.
The poem, written in the city's Middle English dialect of the time, established English as a literary language, much as Dante's "Divine Comedy" did for Italian.
Chaucer and his characters glow with the love of life, the beauty of nature.
They speak to us, through the years.
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