I have the "ultimate" Chaucer - the Robinson edition - but it is at work - I can look up the line in the Prologue.
Chaucer's English is earlier than Spencer's - I suspect the "prick" in Chaucer means to prick, as with a prickle - to goad - this, they are pricked by nature to begin their spring singing (prolly to attract mates, or scare other nesting birds away).
As i noted in another thread, the East Anglia brand of 14th century English, as used by Chaucer and Wycliffe, became the ancestor of standard english: Chaucer's works were extensively published by William Caxton, and Wycliffe's translation of the bible was standard in English for more than two centuries, when King James commissioned a new translation.
I did well in school with Chaucer, Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressida...now Anglo-Saxon I had trouble with, too Germanic...
In bygone years, when i was at university, i learned to read Anglo-Saxon without a gloss or concordance. I doubt that i still could. I'm still able to read middle english without the gloss, however.
