Bring out your dead

Oh wait now, that's not right... I mean bring out your Chaucer, while it's still April.

I finally dug out Chaucer this morning (and by 'dug' I mean read online, since I'm still parted from my lovely well-worn Riverside). Ah, the General Prologue in April, how fitting. Most Aprils I find my way back to it, and then go onwards to a couple of tales. Hmm... I think The Knight's Tale this year, and something to balance that, perhaps The Miller's - sexual intrigue, bawdy humour, apocalyptic foreboding, fake Flood - that tale's got it all.

Anyhoo, here's the opening (you can hear the fab Larry D. Benson reading the Middle English here):

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 foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages...

Dun dun dunnnnn... love this time of year: feels like all of nature is on the move.