[THE noble vindication of true love, as an exalting, purifying, and honour-conferring power, which Chaucer has made in 'The Court of Love,' is repeated in 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.
' At the same time, the close of the poem leads up to 'The Assembly of Fowls;' for, on the appeal of the Nightingale, the dispute between her and the Cuckoo, on the merits and blessings of love, is referred to a parliament of birds, to be held on the morrow after Saint Valentine’s Day.
True, the assembly of the feathered tribes described by Chaucer, though held on Saint Valentine’s Day, and engaged in the discussion of a controversy regarding love, is not occupied with the particular cause which in the present poem the Nightingale appeals to the parliament.
But 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale' none the less serves as a link between the two poems; indicating as it does the nature of those controversies, in matters subject to the supreme control of the King and Queen of Love, which in the subsequent poem we find the courtiers, under the guise of birds, debating in full conclave and under legal forms.
Exceedingly simple in conception, and written in a metre full of musical irregularity and forcible freedom, 'The Cuckoo and the Nightingale' yields in vividness, delicacy, and grace to none of Chaucer’s minor poems.
We are told that the poet, on the third night of May, is sleepless, and rises early in the morning, to try if he may hear the Nightingale sing.
Wandering by a brook-side, he sits down on the flowery lawn, and ere long, lulled by the sweet melody of many birds and the well-according music of the stream, he falls into a kind of doze — 'not all asleep, nor fully waking. ' Then (an evil omen) he