‘The General Prologue’: The Very Beginning of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

The opening lines of the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s great fourteenth-century literary work The Canterbury Tales are among the most powerful and evocative pieces of writing about spring in all of English literature, from the first reference to the rejuvenating qualities of April showers through to the zodiacal allusions to Aries (the Ram). Here it is, in the original Middle English: a time machine taking us back to a spring more than six centuries ago.

Here bygynneth the Book of the tales of Caunterbury.

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóur
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye,
So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages,
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

If you enjoyed the opening to Chaucer’s General Prologue, you might also enjoy our pick of the best Canterbury Tales.