Sombras: Poesias Lyricas (1877)

But, in accordance with the taste of his age, which shunned such sheer straightforwardness in poetry, the Book of the Duchess contains no further transparent reference to the actual circumstances of the wedded life which had come to so premature an end–for John of Gaunt had married Blanche of Lancaster in 1359;–and an elaborate framework is constructed round the essential theme of the poem. Already, however, the instinct of Chaucer’s own poetic genius had taught him the value of personal directness; and, artificially as the course of the poem is arranged, it begins in the most artless and effective fashion with an account given by the poet of his own sleeplessness and its cause.