and comsed1 for to swoon

Piteously and pale as prisoner that dieth.

The Lord of life and of light then laid His eyes together, The day for dread thereof withdrew and dark became the sun, The wall of the temple to-clave 2 even in two pieces;

4

The hard rock all to-rove and right dark night it seemed.
The earth quook and quashed as [if] it quick were,
And dead men for that din
And told why that tempest

came out of deep graves,

so long time dured;

'For a bitter battle' the dead body said;

'Life and Death in this darkness

6.

the one for-doth" the other,

But shall no wight wit witterly · who shall have the mastery Ere Sunday, about sun-rising' and sank with that to earth.

7

*

Lo! how the sun gan lock her light in her-self,
When she saw Him suffer death

*

who sun and sea made!
Lo! the earth, for heaviness that He would death suffer,
Quaked as [a] quick thing · and al to-quashed the rocks!
Lo! hell might not hold but opened, when God tholed,
And let out Simon's1 10
sons to see Him hang on rood.
Now shall Lucifer 'lieve it
For Jesus, as a giant
To break and to beat

all that be against Him,

And to have out all of them that Him liketh.

'Suffer we,' said Truth'I hear and see both
A Spirit speak to hell and bids unspar the gates;
Attollite portas, principes, vestras; &c.'

A voice loud in that light to Lucifer cried,
'Princes of this palace · prest 12 undo the gates,
For here cometh with crown

'Such a light, against our leave Lazarus it fetched; Cold care and cumbrance is come to us all.

10 In the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, two sons of Simeon rise from

the dead, and reveal what they have witnessed in hell during Christ's descent into it.

And lead it where Lazar is and lightly me bind.
Patriarchs and prophets have parled1 hereof long,
That such a lord and a light shall lead them all hence.
But rise up, Ragamuffin ! and reach me the bars

beat, with thy dam‘,

and His light stop.

Ere we through brightness be blent

Check we, and chain we and each chine' stop,

That no light leap in at louvre nor at loop.

And thou, Ashtaroth, hoot out and have out our knaves,
Colting, and all his kin our cattle to save.

8

Brimstone boiling burning out-cast it
All hot on their heads

that enter nigh the walls.

Set bows of brake and brazen guns,

And shoot out shot enough

His sheltrums 10 to blend 11.

Set Mahound at the mangonel
With crooks and with calthrops

12

a-cloy 13

we them each one!'

'Listen!' quoth Lucifer 'for I this lord know,

Both this lord and this light is long ago I knew him.
May no death this Lord dere 14 nor devil's queintise 15;
And, where He will, is His way
If He reave me of my right.
For, by right and by reason
Body and soul be mine both good and ill.
For He Himself it said

but warn Him of the perils.
He robbeth me by mastery 16
the renks 17 that be here

And, since He is so leal a Lord I 'lieve that He will not
Reave us of our right since reason them damnèd.

And, since we have been seised 19 seven thousand winters,
And [He] never was there-against

He were unwrast of1 His word that witness is of truth!'

That is sooth,' said Satan 'but I me sore doubt,

For thou got them with guile and His garden broke,
Against His love and His leave · on His land yedest3,
Not in form of a fiend but in form of an adder;

And enticedest Eve to eat by herself,

And behightest her and him after to know,

As two gods, with God · both good and ill;

through false

Thus haddest thou them out and hither at the last.

It is not graithly9 gotten where guile is at the root.

Forthy 10 I dread me,' quoth the devil 'lest Truth will them

fetch;

And, as thou beguiledest God's image · in going of an adder, So hath God beguiled us all in going of a wy11

'What lord art Thou?' quoth Lucifer

'The lord of might and of main

Duke of this dim place

That Christ may come in

a voice aloud said, that made all things.

anon undo the gates,

the king's son of heaven.'

And with that breath hell brake with all Belial's bars;
For any wy or ward wide opened the gates.

12 •

Patriarchs and prophets · populus in tenebris
Sang with saint John ecce agnus Dei!

Lucifer might not look

And those that our Lord loved with that light forth flew

Ashtoreth and all others hid them in hernes 14, 14

*

They durst not look on our Lord the least of them all,
But let Him lead forth which Him list

Many hundreds of angels · harped then and sang,
Culpat caro, purgat caro, Regnat Deus Dei caro.
Then piped Peace of poetry a note,

Clarior est solito post maxima nebula Phebus,

Post inimicitias clarior est et amor.

'After sharpest showers,' quoth Peace

'most sheen is the sun,

Is no weather warmer than after watery clouds,

Nor love liefer nor liefer friends,

Than after war and wrack when Love and Peace be masters.

Was never war in this world · nor wickeder envy,

But Love, if him list to laughing it brought,

And Peace, through patience all perils stopped.'

Truth trumped them, and sang Te Deum laudamus;
And then luted Love in a loud note,

Ecce quam bonum et quam iocundum est habitare fratres in unum!

Till the day dawned these damsels danced,

That men rung to the resurrection and with that I awaked, And called Kitte my wife and Calote my daughter,

'Arise! and go reverence • God's resurrection,

And creep on knees to the cross and kiss it for a jewel,
And rightfullest relic none richer on earth!

For God's blessed body it bare, for our boot1,

JOHN GOWER.

The

[JOHN GOWER seems to have been born about 1330, and died in 1408, having been blind for eight or nine years before his death. He was a gentleman of ancient family, owning estates in Kent and Suffolk. place of his birth is unknown; he is believed to have died in the priory of St. Mary Overies, Southwark, in the church of which, now called St. Saviour's, his tomb may still be seen. The earliest of his three principal works, Speculum Meditantis, was in French verse, but it has not come down to posterity, nor is the precise time of its composition known. The second, Vox Clamantis, in Latin elegiac verse, was written between 1382 and 1384, and commemorates the rising of the commons under Wat Tyler in the former year, moralizing upon it and improving the occasion with astonishing prolixity. The third, Confessio Amantis, one of the best known of early English poems, was written between 1385 and 1393.]

It was

The poetry of Gower has been variously estimated. a practice with the poets of the sixteenth century to link his name in a venerated trio with those of Chaucer and Lydgate, just as in the seventeenth century the names of Shakspere, Jonson, and Fletcher were often joined together as the great dramatic lights of the preceding age. In each case the effect of closer study has been to lead men to think that they have been joining gold with iron and clay. Shakspere, read attentively, rises high above the standard reached by Jonson and Fletcher; and in a yet greater degree has the genius of Chaucer, accurately studied. and rightly felt, impressed the present age with the sense of his unrivalled eminence among his contemporaries.

Gower, a man of birth and fortune, must have lived in the cultivated society of his day. Of that society, French poetry, in its various forms of Fabliau, Rondel, Romance, Epigram, Chanson, &c., was one of the chief delights and distractions. With much imitative power, with the faculty of sustained attention, with a high appreciation for his own thoughts, and remarkable