When we read Chaucer we are transported into a world in which the heavenly
bodies and their movements seem to bear a more intimate relation to human
life than they do in the world in which we live. The thought of the
revolving spheres carrying sun, moon, and planets, regulating light and
heat on the earth, and exercising a mysterious influence over terrestrial
events and human destiny was a sublime conception and one that naturally
appealed to the imagination of a poet. Chaucer was impressed alike by the
vastness of the revolving spheres in comparison to the earth's smallness,
by their orderly arrangement, and by the unceasing regularity of their
appearance which seemed to show that they should eternally abide. In the
_Parlement of Foules_ he interpolates a passage from Cicero's _Somnium
Scipionis_ in which Africanus appears to the sleeping Scipio, points out
to him the insignificance of our little earth when compared with the
vastness of the heavens and then admonishes him to regard the things of
this world as of little importance when compared with the joys of the
heavenly life to come.[9]
"Than shewed he him the litel erthe, that heer is,
At regard of the hevenes quantite;
And after shewed he him the nyne speres."
The regular arrangement of the planetary spheres clings often to the
poet's fancy and he makes many allusions to their order in the heavens. He
speaks of Mars as "the thridde hevenes lord above"[10] and of Venus as
presiding over the "fifte cercle."[11] In _Troilus and Criseyde_ the poet
invokes Venus as the adorning light of the third heaven.[12]
"O blisful light, of which the bemes clere
Adorneth al the thridde hevene faire!"[13]
Mediaeval astronomers as we have seen, imagined nine spheres, each of the
seven innermost carrying with it one of the planets in the order mentioned
below; the eighth sphere was that of the fixed stars, and to account for
the precession of the equinoxes, men supposed it to have a slow motion
from west to east, round the axis of the zodiac; the ninth or outermost
sphere they called the _primum mobile_, or the sphere of first motion, and
supposed it to revolve daily from east to west, carrying all the other
spheres with it. The thought of the two outer spheres, the _primum
mobile_, whirling along with it all the inner spheres, and the firmament,
bearing hosts of bright stars, seems to have appealed strongly to the
poet's imagination. In the _Tale of the Man of Lawe_ the _primum mobile_
is described as crowding and hurling in diurnal revolution from east to
west all the spheres that would naturally follow the slow course of the
zodiac from west to east.[14] Elsewhere the _primum mobile_ is called the
"whele that bereth the sterres" and is said to turn the heavens with a
"ravisshing sweigh:"
"O thou maker of the whele that bereth the sterres, which that art
y-fastned to thy perdurable chayer, and tornest the hevene with a
ravisshing sweigh, and constreinest the sterres to suffren thy lawe;"[15]
The firmament, which in Chaucer is not restricted to the eighth sphere but
generally refers to the whole expanse of the heavens, is many times
mentioned by Chaucer; and its appearance on clear or cloudy nights, its
changing aspects before an impending storm or with the coming of dawn,
beautifully described.[16]