World Radio

It's still a mystery why Geoffrey Chaucer, who was so fluent in French, should have written in rough and unfashionable English. Thank goodness he did, because Troilus and Criseyde, read here by Carolyne Larrington of Oxford University on In Our Time, is reckoned to be the most passionate love poem ever written...


Hir armes smale, hir streyghte bak and softe,
Hir sydes longe, fleshly, smothe, and whyte
He gan to stroke, and good thrift bad ful ofte
Hir snowish throte, hir brestes rounde and lyte;
Thus in this hevene he gan him to delyte,
And ther-with-al a thousand tyme hir kiste;
That, what to done, for Ioye unnethe he wiste.