Parlement of Foules - Summary

Summary

The poem begins with the narrator reading Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis in the hope of learning some “certeyn thing.” When he falls asleep Scipio Africanus appears and guides him up through the celestial spheres to Venus’s temple, after some deliberation at the gate both promising a “welle of grace” and a stream that “ledeth to the sorweful were/ Ther as a fissh in prison is al drye” (Reminiscent of Dante's "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"). The narrator then passes through Venus’s dark temple with its friezes of doomed lovers and out into the bright sunlight where Nature is convening a parliament at which the birds all choose their mates. There three tercel eagles make their case for the hand of a formel eagle until the birds of the lower estates begin to protest and launch into a comic parliamentary debate, which Nature herself finally ends. None of the tercels wins the formel, for at her request Nature allows her to put off her decision for another year (indeed, female birds of prey often become sexually mature at one year of age, males only at two years). Nature allows the other birds, however, to pair off. The dream ends with a song welcoming the new summer. The dreamer awakes, still unsatisfied, and returns to his books, hoping still to learn the thing for which he seeks.