Spring in February

The "dredful joye" of Valentine's Day

In its conception, Valentine's Day was for the birds.  In his poem "Parlement of Foules," written in the early 1380s, Geoffrey Chaucer invented the image of the day of St. Valentine, the fourteenth of February, as an occasion for birds (foules, fowls) to meet, match, and mate:

For this was on Seynt Valentynes day,

Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his …