Chaucer’s Valentine’s Poem, 10 Fabulous Medieval Valentine gifts and How to Compose a Love Sonnet

Continuing with our advent calendar theme of 2022, we decided to create a set of magazine covers in the likeness of GQ or Men’s Health that capture the medieval essence for men. If such a journal could have existed, what sort of articles would it have contained? Anything and everything to assist a knight or his squire about to set out on a military campaign, crusade or pilgrimage. So please enjoy the snippets below from the February issues of The Rusty Gauntlet.

It must also be mentioned that some articles in these blogs are written as they would have appeared directly in the ‘magazine’, whilst others, due to wanting to be as informative as possible, are written from the present-day point of view. Either way, please enjoy.

Chaucer’s Valentine’s Love Poem

*The Parliament of Birds*, an 18th-century oil painting by Carl Wilhelm de Hamilton

The Parlement of Foules (c. 1340s–1400) contains one of the earliest references to the idea that Saint Valentine’s Day is a special day for lovers. Made up of approximately 700 lines it begins with the narrator reading Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, (written by Cicero, it is the sixth book of De re publica, and describes a dream vision of the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, set two years before he oversaw the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC).

The main body of the poem describes a dream sequence of a meeting of birds – a parliament at which three tercels (male eagles) present their individual arguments in the hope of winning the hand of a formel (a female eagle), who ultimately refuses them all. The message, as presented by ‘nature’ reflects the importance of free will. The dream ends with a song welcoming the new spring. Enjoy …

The Parlement of Fowles

The life so short, the craft so long to learn,

The assay so hard, so sharp the conquering,
The fearful joy that slips away in turn,
All this mean I by Love, that my feeling
Astonishes with its wondrous working
So fiercely that when I on love do think
I know not well whether I float or sink.

For although I know not Love indeed
Nor know how he pays his folk their hire,
Yet full oft it happens in books I read
Of his miracles and his cruel ire.
There I read he will be lord and sire;
I dare only say, his strokes being sore,
‘God save such a lord!’ I’ll say no more.

By habit, both for pleasure and for lore,
In books I often read, as I have told.
But why do I speak thus? A time before,
Not long ago, I happened to behold
A certain book written in letters old;
And thereupon, a certain thing to learn,
The long day did its pages swiftly turn.

For out of old fields, as men say,
Comes all this new corn from year to year;
And out of old books, in good faith,
Comes all this new science that men hear.
But now to the purpose of this matter –
To read on did grant me such delight,
That the day seemed brief till it was night.

…..

When I had come again unto the place
Of which I spoke, that was so sweet and green,
Forth I walked to bring myself solace.
Then was I aware, there sat a queen:
As in brightness the summer sun’s sheen
Outshines the star, right so beyond measure
Was she fairer too than any creature.

And in a clearing on a hill of flowers
Was set this noble goddess, Nature;
Of branches were her halls and her bowers
Wrought according to her art and measure;
Nor was there any fowl she does engender
That was not seen there in her presence,
To hear her judgement, and give audience.

For this was on Saint Valentine’s day,
When every fowl comes there his mate to take,
Of every species that men know, I say,
And then so huge a crowd did they make,
That earth and sea, and tree, and every lake
Was so full, that there was scarcely space
For me to stand, so full was all the place.

And as Alain, in his Complaint of Nature,
Describes her array and paints her face,
In such array might men there find her.
So this noble Empress, full of grace,
Bade every fowl to take its proper place
As they were wont to do from year to year,
On Saint Valentine’s day, standing there.

Extract modernised by A S Kline

10 Fabulous Medieval Valentine gifts for both Men and Women

Personalise some of your beloved’s clothes? Add handmade buttons and badges you have collected in your travels.

Compose a sonnet and present it with fervour, just before you retire for the evening.

Upcycle one of your lover’s old shirts by sewing strands of your hair into the seams.

Collect the fallen feathers from the birds in your falconry and construct a unique bouquet.

Present your lover with a fresh bunch of violets. Whilst imprisoned by Claudius, Saint Valentine crushed violet coloured flowers that grew outside his prison cell window to make ink, which he used to write his letters.

Bake a selection of treats, decorated with your own and your lovers’ initials entwinned.

Embroider your name into a ribbon that can be presented to your lover at his next joust.

Whittle a love spoon for your someone special.

Present your lover with a key. This special gift not only indicates that you have given them entry to your heart, but also wards off epilepsy, for which St Valentine is the patron saint.

Weave a belt from leather pieces, in your own pattern.

How to Compose a Love Sonnet

A sonnet expresses a single idea, but it is generally one that develops and expands, with multiple facets, leading to a conclusion, and all within a very specific rhyming scheme. A 14 line sonnet consist of four divisions, known as ‘quatrains’. The first three of the four sonnet divisions/quatrains have the same rhyme scheme, whilst the fourth and last division/quatrain has a different rhyme scheme:

So, how to write something unique?

Your 14 line sonnet must be written in three sets of four lines and one set of two lines.

1. The first quatrain will have lines that end in a rhyme scheme like this: ABAB, for example, ‘day’, ‘temperate’, ‘may’, ‘date’.

2. The second quatrain will use different words to rhyme scheme like this: CDCD, for example, ‘shines’, ‘dimmed’, ‘declines’, ‘untrimmed’.

3. The third quatrain needs different words again, to rhyme scheme like this: EFEF, for example, ‘fade’, ‘lowest’, ‘shade’, ‘growest’.

4. The final 2 lines are called a couplet. The rhyme scheme for this is GG, using words you haven’t used in the rhyming so far, for example, ‘see’ and thee’.

Finally, you must construct your sonnet in iambic pentameter, which means that you must use iambus. Iambus is another word for a two-syllable foot. The first syllable will normally be unstressed and the second stressed. For example, de/light, the sun, for/lorn, one day, re/lease. English is a perfect language for iambus because of the way the stressed and unstressed syllables work.

Every line of your sonnet must have five feet (so 10 syllables). Pentameter means five and iambic pentameter simply means five feet. The iambic pentameter can be slightly flexible, but you must stick rigidly to the required line structure for your sonnet.

Below are three perfect (and beautiful) examples –

Sir Philip Sidney, Sonnet 1 from Astrophil and Stella (1580s)

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn’d brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention’s stay;
Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame Study’s blows;
And others’ feet still seem’d but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?'(1590s)

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

John Donne, Holy Sonnet 10 ‘Death, Be Not Proud’ (1663)

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

Catherine A Wilson co-writes with Catherine T Wilson (no relation). Their first book, The Lily and the Lion, was based upon their true-life accidental meeting and resulting friendship. All four books in their ‘Lions and Lilies’ series have won first place prizes in the Chatelaine/Chaucer Awards in the US and in 2019, The Traitor’s Noose won the Grand Prize Chaucer Award.