He seems again to have returned to service about the Court, and it was now that his first poems made their appearance, the "Compleynte to Pity" in 1368, and in 1369 the "Death of Blanch the Duchesse," the wife of John of Gaunt who from this time at least may be looked upon as his patron.

It may have been to John's influence that he owed his employment in seven diplomatic missions which were probably connected with the financial straits of the Crown.

Three of these, in 1372, 1374, and 1378, carried him to Italy.

He visited Genoa and the brilliant court of the Visconti at Milan; at Florence, where the memory of Dante, the "great master" whom he commemorates so reverently in his verse, was still living, he may have met Boccaccio; at Padua, like his own clerk of Oxenford, he possibly caught the story of Griseldis from the lips of Petrarca.
[Sidenote: His Early Poems] It was these visits to Italy which gave us the Chaucer whom we know.

From that hour his work stands out in vivid contrast with the poetic literature from the heart of which it sprang.