Then forth to the near fields, and feed his gaze
On one fair flower in starry myriads spread,
And in her graciousness be comforted:--

Then, joyous with a poet's joy, to draw
With genial touch, and strokes of patient skill,
The very image of each thing he saw:--
He limn'd the man all round, for good or ill,
Having both sighs and laughter at his will;
Life as it went he grasp'd in vision true,
Yet stood outside the scene his pencil drew.

--Man's inner passions in their conscience-strife,
The conflicts of the heart against the heart,
The mother yearning o'er the infant's life,
The maiden wrong'd by wealth and lecherous art,
The leper's loathsome cell from man apart,
War's hell of lust and fire, the village-woe,
The tinsel chivalry veiling shame below,--

Not his to draw,--to see, perhaps:--Our eyes
Hold bias with our humour:--His, to paint
With Nature's freshness, what before him lies:
The knave, the fool; the frolicsome, the quaint:
His the broad jest, the laugh without restraint,
The ready tears, the spirit lightly moved;
Loving the world, and by the world beloved.

So forth fared Chaucer on his pilgrimage
Through England's humours; in immortal song