Extract:
“Thomas Hoccleve wrote his Complaint [to a friend] in around 1420. That’s nearly five hundred and ninety four years ago. Yet, we read with empathy as he struggles with feelings of listlessness as the summer turns into winter. The Complaint‘s Prologue opens as follows:
After that hervest Inned had his sheves,
and that the broune season of myhelmess
was come and gan the trees robbe of ther leves
That grene had bene and in lusty fresshness,
and them in-to colowre of yelowness
hadd dyne and doune throwne vndar foote
that chaunge sank into myne herte roote (l.1-7)
Hoccleve describes the ominous visual signs of the transition between autumn and winter as Michealmas arrives and robs the trees of their adornment. The yellow leaves that fall and are ‘throwne’ under careless feet contrast with the green, ‘lusty’, fresh, feeling of summer. The most sinking feeling comes as the change of the season sinks directly into Hoccleve’s ‘herte roote’ – the innermost depths of his heart. We know that feeling, right? That sense that the cold, dark, days are physically seeping into the depths of our souls?
Hoccleve continues:
…and in the end of novembar, vpon a nyght,
syghenge sore as I in my bed lay
for this and othar thowghts which many a day
before I toke sleape cam none in myne eye
so vexyd me the thowghtfull maladye. (l. 17-21)
It’s the end of November, as it is today, 593 years later. Hoccleve is lying in his bed, sighing from the bottom of his heart, thinking over the thoughts that are bringing him down. These vexful contemplations drag him so low that no sleep will come. He lies awake, in turning sleeplessly in ‘thowghtfull maladye’. The very process of thinking is a disease to Hoccleve – his invasive thoughts afflict him like a physical malady.
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How my heart sings 