A certain poor man says he has succeeded in learning his A B C, his Paternoster, and his Ave Mary, but he cannot, do what he will, learn his Creed. He sets out, therefore, to find some one whose life, according with his profession, may give him a hope that he will teach him his creed aright. He applies to the friars. One after another, every order abuses the other; nor this only, but for money offers either to teach him his creed, or to absolve him for ignorance of the same. He finds no helper until he falls in with Pierce the Ploughman, of whose poverty he gives a most touching description. I shall, however, only quote some lines of The Believe as taught by the Ploughman, and this principally to show the nature of the versification:
Leve thou on our Lord God, that all the world wroughté; believe.
Holy heaven upon high wholly he formed;
And is almighty himself over all his workés;
And wrought as his will was, the world and the heaven;
And on gentle Jesus Christ, engendered of himselven,
His own only Son, Lord over all y-knowen.
* * * * *
With thorn y-crowned, crucified, and on the cross diéd;
And sythen his blessed body was in a stone buried; after that.
And descended adown to the dark hellé,
And fetched out our forefathers; and they full fain weren. glad.
The third day readily, himself rose from death,
And on a stone there he stood, he stey up to heaven. where: ascended.
Here there is no rhyme. There is measure—a dance-movement in the verse; and likewise, in most of the lines, what was essential to Anglo-Saxon verse—three or more words beginning with the same sound. This is somewhat of the nature of rhyme, and was all our Anglo-Saxon forefathers had of the kind. Their Norman conquerors brought in rhyme, regularity of measure, and division into stanzas, with many refinements of versification now regarded, with some justice and a little more injustice, as peurilities. Strange as it may seem, the peculiar rhythmic movement of the Anglo-Saxon verse is even yet the most popular of all measures. Its representative is now that kind of verse which is measured not by the number of syllables, but by the number of accented syllables. The bulk of the nation is yet Anglo-Saxon in its blind poetic tastes.
Before taking my leave of this mode, I would give one fine specimen from another poem, lately printed, for the first time in full, from Bishop Percy's manuscript. It may chronologically belong to the beginning of the next century: its proper place in my volume is here. It is called Death and Liffe. Like Langland's poem, it is a vision; but, short as it is in comparison, there is far more poetry in it than in Piers Plowman. Life is thus described:
She was brighter of her blee18 than was the bright sun;
Her rudd19 redder than the rose that on the rise20 hangeth;
Meekly smiling with her mouth, and merry in her looks;
Ever laughing for love, as she like would.
Everything bursts into life and blossom at her presence,
And the grass that was grey greened belive. forthwith.
But the finest passage is part of Life's answer to Death, who has been triumphing over her:
How didst thou joust at Jerusalem, with Jesu, my Lord,
Where thou deemedst his death in one day's time! judgedst.
There wast thou shamed and shent and stripped for aye! rebuked.
When thou saw the king come with the cross on his shoulder,
On the top of Calvary thou camest him against;
Like a traitor untrue, treason thou thought;
Thou laid upon my liege lord loathful hands,
Sithen beat him on his body, and buffeted him rightly, then.
Till the railing red blood ran from his sides; pouring down.
Sith rent him on the rood with full red wounds: then.
To all the woes that him wasted, I wot not few,
Then deemedst (him) to have been dead, and dressed for ever.
But, Death, how didst thou then, with all thy derffe words, fierce.
When thou pricked at his pap with the point of a spear,
And touched the tabernacle of his true heart,
Where my bower was bigged to abide for ever? built.
When the glory of his Godhead glinted in thy face,
Then wast thou feared of this fare in thy false heart; affair.
Then thou hied into hell-hole to hide thee belive; at once.
Thy falchion flew out of thy fist, so fast thou thee hied;
Thou durst not blush once back, for better or worse, look.
But drew thee down full in that deep hell,
And bade them bar bigly Belzebub his gates. greatly, strongly.
Then thou told them tidings, that teened them sore; grieved.
How that king came to kithen his strength, show.
And how she21 had beaten thee on thy bent,22
and thy brand taken,
With everlasting life that longed him till. belonged to him.
When Life has ended her speech to Death, she turns to her own followers and says:—
Therefore be not abashed, my barnes so dear, children.
Of her falchion so fierce, nor of her fell words.
She hath no might, nay, no means, no more you to grieve,
Nor on your comely corses to clap once her hands.
I shall look you full lively, and latch full well, search for:
And keere ye further of this kithe23 above [lay hold of.
the clear skies.
I now turn from those poems of national scope and wide social interest, bearing their share, doubtless, in the growth of the great changes that showed themselves at length more than a century after, and from the poem I have just quoted of a yet wider human interest, to one of another tone, springing from the grief that attends love, and the aspiration born of the grief. It is, nevertheless, wide in its scope as the conflict between Death and Life, although dealing with the individual and not with the race. The former poems named of Pierce Ploughman are the cry of John the Baptist in the English wilderness; this is the longing of Hannah at home, having left her little son in the temple. The latter seems a poorer matter; but it is an easier thing to utter grand words of just condemnation, than, in the silence of the chamber, or with the well-known household-life around, forcing upon the consciousness only the law of things seen, to regard with steadfastness the blank left by a beloved form, and believe in the unseen, the marvellous, the eternal. In the midst of "the