Cupid’s Forge Under a tree beside a welle I sey Cupide our lorde his arrowes forge and file: And at his feete his bowe already lay; And wel his daughter tempred, at the while, The hiddes in the welle; and with her wile She couched hem after, as they should serve Same to slee, and some to wound and kerve. Chaucer’s Assembly of Foules
Malcolm Bell, Edward Burne-Jones, A Record and Review, George Bell & Son, London & New York 1892, pages 33-34 & 90, illustrated opposite page 34: Another of the direct realisations of subjects from Chaucer was finished in 1861, that Cupid's Forge which the poet saw in his dreams when ”˜Scipion Affrikan led to the enchanted garden wherein was held the humorous Assembly of Foules....On the right Cupid, in a red dress, with softly folded flame-coloured wings, kneels beside his anvil busily filing at a glowing arrow-head, while behind him others lie heating in the forge, upon the green thatched roof of two white doves, the birds of Venus, bill and coo. On the left a square basin of pinkish marble receives ”˜the colde welle streame’ in which a beautiful kneeling girl in purple, the Cupid’s ”˜doughter’ of Chaucer's creation, tempers the hot blade of one arrow while she holds those already completed, according to their destiny either to kill or only wound, part in the hollow of her left arm, part in the folds of her uplifted tunic. The background with its gleams of daylight between the foliage, which can unluckily be only dimly suggested by the reproductions in black and white, is just such a flowery pleasaunce as Chaucer loved to imagine and Mr Burne-Jones delights in giving form and colour to; “A garden saw I full of blossomed bowis Upon a river in a grene mede, There as sweetness evermore inough is, With floures, white, blewe, yellowe, and rede.” The happy rendering of the spirit of the poem in this little watercolour is very notable, and inspired the hope that a completed set of illustrations to Chaucer, still only vaguely contemplated, may yet reach a consummation devoutly to be wished.