In this book I have sought to trace the course of our religious poetry from an early period of our literary history.
This could hardly be done without reference to some of the principal phases of the religious history of the nation. To give anything like a full history of the religious feeling of a single county, would require a large book, and—not to mention sermons—would involve a thorough acquaintance with the hymns of the country—a very wide subject, which I have not considered of sufficient importance from a literary point of view to come within the scope of the volume.
But if its poetry be the cream of a people's thought, some true indications of the history of its religious feeling must be found in its religious verse, and I hope I have not altogether failed in setting forth these indications.
My chief aim, however, will show itself to have been the mediating towards an intelligent and cordial sympathy betwixt my readers and the writers from whom I have quoted. In this I have some confidence of success.
Heartily do I throw this my small pebble at the head of the great
Sabbath-breaker Schism.
If the act of worship be the highest human condition, it follows that the highest human art must find material in the modes of worship. The first poetry of a nation will not be religious poetry: the nation must have a history at least before it can possess any material capable of being cast into the mould of religious utterance; but, the nation once possessed of this material, poetry is the first form religious utterance will assume.
The earliest form of literature is the ballad, which is the germ of all subsequent forms of poetry, for it has in itself all their elements: the lyric, for it was first chanted to some stringed instrument; the epic, for it tells a tale, often of solemn and ancient report; the dramatic, for its actors are ever ready to start forward into life, snatch the word from the mouth of the narrator, and speak in their own persons. All these forms have been used for the utterance of religious thought and feeling. Of the lyrical poems of England, religion possesses the most; of the epic, the best; of the dramatic, the oldest.
Of each of these I shall have occasion to speak; but, as the title of the book implies—for Antiphon means the responsive song of the parted choir—I shall have chiefly to do with the lyric or song form.
For song is the speech of feeling. Even the prose of emotion always wanders into the rhythmical. Hence, as well as for other reasons belonging to its nature, it is one chief mode in which men unite to praise God; for in thus praising they hold communion with each other, and the praise expands and grows.
The individual heart, however, must first have been uplifted into praiseful song, before the common ground and form of feeling, in virtue of which men might thus meet, could be supplied. But the vocal utterance or the bodily presence is not at all necessary for this communion. When we read rejoicingly the true song-speech of one of our singing brethren, we hold song-worship with him and with all who have thus at any time shared in his feelings, even if he have passed centuries ago into the "high countries" of song.
My object is to erect, as it were, in this book, a little auricle, or spot of concentrated hearing, where the hearts of my readers may listen, and join in the song of their country's singing men and singing women.
I will build it, if I may, like a chapel in the great church of England's worship, gathering the sounds of its never-ceasing choir, heart after heart lifting up itself in the music of speech, heart after heart responding across the ages. Hearing, we worship with them.
For we must not forget that, although the individual song springs from the heart of the individual, the song of a country is not merely cumulative: it is vital in its growth, and therefore composed of historically dependent members. No man could sing as he has sung, had not others sung before him. Deep answereth unto deep, face to face, praise to praise. To the sound of the trumpet the harp returns its own vibrating response—alike, but how different! The religious song of the country, I say again, is a growth, rooted deep in all its story.
Besides the fact that the lyric chiefly will rouse the devotional feeling, there is another reason why I should principally use it: I wish to make my book valuable in its parts as in itself. The value of a thing depends in large measure upon its unity, its wholeness. In a work of these limits, that form of verse alone can be available for its unity which is like the song of the bird—a warble and then a stillness. However valuable an extract may be—and I shall not quite eschew such—an entire lyric, I had almost said however inferior, if worthy of a place at all, is of greater value, especially if regarded in relation to the form of setting with which I hope to surround it.
There is a sense in which I may, without presumption, adopt the name of Choragus, or leader of the chorus, in relation to these singers: I must take upon me to order who shall sing, when he shall sing, and which of his songs he shall sing. But I would rather assume the office of master of the hearing, for my aim shall be to cause the song to be truly heard; to set forth worthy points in form, in matter, and in relation; to say with regard to the singer himself, his time, its modes, its beliefs, such things as may help to set the song in its true light—its relation, namely, to the source whence it sprung, which alone can secure its right reception by the heart of the hearer. For my chief aim will be the heart; seeing that, although there is no dividing of the one from the other, the heart can do far more for the intellect than the intellect can do for the heart.
We must not now attempt to hear the singers of times so old that their language is unintelligible without labour. For this there is not room, even if otherwise it were desirable that such should divide the volume. We must leave Anglo-Saxon behind us. In Early English, I shall give a few valuable lyrics, but they shall not be so far removed from our present speech but that, with a reasonable amount of assistance, the nature and degree of which I shall set forth, they shall not only present themselves to the reader's understanding, but commend themselves to his imagination and judgment.
In the midst of wars and rumours of wars, the strife of king and barons, and persistent efforts to subdue neighbouring countries, the mere effervescence of the life of the nation, let us think for a moment of that to which the poems I am about to present bear good witness—the true life of the people, growing quietly, slowly, unperceived—the leaven hid in the meal. For what is the true life of a nation? That, I answer, in its modes of thought, its manners and habits, which favours the growth within the individual of that kingdom of heaven for the sake only of which the kingdoms of earth exist. The true life of the people, as distinguished from the nation, is simply the growth in its individuals of those eternal principles of truth, in proportion to whose power in them they take rank in the kingdom of heaven, the only kingdom that can endure, all others being but as the mimicries of children playing at government.
Little as they then knew of the relations of the wonderful story on which their faith was built, to everything human, the same truth was at work then which is now—poor as the recognition of these relations yet is—slowly setting men free. In the hardest winter the roots are still alive in the frozen ground.
In the silence of the monastery, unnatural as that life was, germinated much of this deeper life. As we must not judge of the life of the nation by its kings and mighty men, so we must not judge of the life in the Church by those who are called Rabbi. The very notion of the kingdom of heaven implies a secret growth, secret from no affectation of mystery, but because its goings-on are in the depths of the human nature where it holds communion with the Divine. In the Church, as in society, we often find that that which shows itself uppermost is but the froth, a sign, it may be, of life beneath, but in itself worthless. When the man arises with a servant's heart and a ruler's brain, then is the summer of the Church's content. But whether the men who wrote the following songs moved in some shining orbit of rank, or only knelt in some dim chapel, and walked in some pale cloister, we cannot tell, for they have left no name behind them.
My reader will observe that there is little of theory and much of love in these lyrics. The recognition of a living Master is far more than any notions about him. In the worship of him a thousand truths are working, unknown and yet active, which, embodied in theory, and dissociated from the living mind that was in Christ, will as certainly breed worms as any omer of hoarded manna. Holding the skirt of his garment in one hand, we shall in the other hold the key to all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
I think almost all the earliest religious poetry is about him and his mother. Their longing after his humanity made them idolize his mother. If we forget that only through his humanity can we approach his divinity, we shall soon forget likewise that his mother is blessed among women.
I take the poems from one of the Percy Society publications, edited by Mr. Wright from a manuscript in the British Museum. He adjudges them to the reign of Edward I. Perhaps we may find in them a sign or two that in cultivating our intellect we have in some measure neglected our heart.
But first as to the mode in which I present them to my readers: I have followed these rules:—
1. Wherever a word differs from the modern word only in spelling, I have, for the sake of readier comprehension, substituted the modern form, with the following exception:—Where the spelling indicates a different pronunciation, necessary for the rhyme or the measure, I retain such part of the older form, marking with an acute accent any vowel now silent which must be sounded.
2. Where the word used is antique in root, I give the modern synonym in the margin. Antique phrases I explain in foot-notes.
It must be borne in mind that our modern pronunciation can hardly fail in other cases as well to injure the melody of the verses.
The modern reader will often find it difficult to get a rhythm out of some of them. This may arise from any of several causes. In the first place many final e's were then sounded which are now silent; and it is not easy to tell which of them to sound. Again, some words were pronounced as dissyllables which we treat as monosyllables, and others as monosyllables which we treat as dissyllables. I suspect besides, that some of the old writers were content to allow a prolonged syllable to stand for two short ones, a mode not without great beauty when sparingly and judiciously employed. Short supernumerary syllables were likewise allowed considerable freedom to come and go. A good deal must, however, be put down to the carelessness and presumption of the transcribers, who may very well have been incapable of detecting their own blunders. One of these ancient mechanics of literature caused Chaucer endless annoyance with his corruptions, as a humorous little poem, the last in his works, sufficiently indicates. From the same sources no doubt spring as well most of the variations of text in the manuscripts.
The first of the poems is chiefly a conversation between the Lord on the cross and his mother standing at its foot. A few prefatory remarks in explanation of some of its allusions will help my readers to enjoy it.
It was at one time a common belief, and the notion has not yet, I think, altogether vanished, that the dying are held back from repose by the love that is unwilling to yield them up. Hence, in the third stanza, the Lord prays his mother to let him die. In the fifth, he reasons against her overwhelming sorrows on the ground of the deliverance his sufferings will bring to the human race. But she can only feel her own misery.
To understand the seventh and eighth, it is necessary to know that, among other strange things accepted by the early Church, it was believed that the mother of Jesus had no suffering at his birth. This of course rendered her incapable of perfect sympathy with other mothers. It is a lovely invention, then, that he should thus commend mothers to his mother, telling her to judge of the pains of motherhood by those which she now endured. Still he fails to turn aside her thoughts. She is thinking still only of her own and her son's suffering, while he continues bent on making her think of others, until, at last, forth comes her prayer for all women. This seems to me a tenderness grand as exquisite.
The outburst of the chorus of the Faithful in the last stanza but one—
When he rose, then fell her sorrow,
is as fine as anything I know in the region of the lyric.
"Stand well, mother, under rood;[1] the cross.
Behold thy son with gladé mood; cheerful.
Blithe mother mayst thou be."
"Son, how should I blithé stand?
I see thy feet, I see thy hand
Nailéd to the hard tree."
"Mother, do way thy wepynde: give over thy weeping.
I tholé death for mankind—suffer.
For my guilt thole I none."
"Son, I feel the dede stounde; death-pang.
The sword is at my heart's ground bottom.
That me byhet Simeon." foreshowed.
"Mother, mercy! let me die,
For Adam out of hell buy, for to buy Adam.
And his kin that is forlore." lost.
"Son, what shall me to rede?[2]
My pain paineth me to dede: death.
Let me die thee before!"
"Mother, thou rue all of thy bairn; rue thou; all is only expletive
Thou wash away the bloody tern; wash thou; tears.
It doth me worse than my ded." hurts me more; death.
"Son, how may I terés werne? turn aside tears.
I see the bloody streamés erne flow.
From thy heart to my fet." feet.
"Mother, now I may thee seye, say to thee.
Better is that I one deye die.
Than all mankind to hellé go."
"Son, I see thy body byswongen, lashed.
Feet and hands throughout stongen: pierced through and through.
No wonder though me be woe." woe be to me.
"Mother, now I shall thee tell,
If I not die, thou goest to hell:
I thole death for thy sake." endure.
"Son, thou art so meek and mynde, thoughtful.
Ne wyt me not, it is my kind[3]
That I for thee this sorrow make."
"Mother, now thou mayst well leren learn.
What sorrow have that children beren, they have; bear.
What sorrow it is with childé gon." to go.
"Sorrow, I wis! I can thee tell!
But it be the pain of hell except.
More sorrow wot I none."
"Mother, rue of mother-care, take pity upon.
For now thou wost of mother-fare, knowest.
Though thou be clean maiden mon."[4]
"Soné, help at alle need
Allé those that to me grede, cry.
Maiden, wife, and full wymmon." woman with child.
"Mother, may I no longer dwell;
The time is come I shall to hell;
The third day I rise upon."
"Son, I will with thee founden; set out, go.
I die, I wis, for thy wounden:
So sorrowful death nes never none." was not never none.
When he rose, then fell her sorrow;
Her bliss sprung the third morrow:
Blithe mother wert thou tho! then.
Lady, for that ilké bliss, same.
Beseech thy son of sunnés lisse: for sin's release.
Thou be our shield against our foe. Be thou.
Blessed be thou, full of bliss!
Let us never heaven miss,
Through thy sweeté Sonés might!
Loverd, for that ilké blood, Lord,
That thou sheddest on the rood,
Thou bring us into heaven's light. AMEN.
I think my readers will not be sorry to have another of a similar character.
I sigh when I sing
For sorrow that I see,
When I with weeping
Behold upon the tree,
And see Jesus the sweet
His heart's blood for-lete yield quite.
For the love of me.
His woundés waxen wete, wet.
They weepen still and mete:[5]
Mary rueth thee. pitieth.
High upon a down, hill.
Where all folk it see may,
A mile from each town,
About the mid-day,
The rood is up arearéd;
His friendés are afearéd,
And clingeth so the clay;[6]
The rood stands in stone,
Mary stands her on,
And saith Welaway!
When I thee behold
With eyen brighté bo, eyes bright both.
And thy body cold—
Thy ble waxeth blo, colour: livid.
Thou hangest all of blood bloody.
So high upon the rood
Between thieves tuo—two.
Who may sigh more?
Mary weepeth sore,
And sees all this woe.
The nails be too strong,
The smiths are too sly; skilful.
Thou bleedest all too long;
The tree is all too high;
The stones be all wete! wet.
Alas, Jesu, the sweet!
For now friend hast thou none,
But Saint John to-mournynde, mourning greatly.
And Mary wepynde, weeping.
For pain that thee is on.
Oft when I sike sigh.
And makie my moan,
Well ill though me like,
Wonder is it none.[7]
When I see hang high
And bitter pains dreye, dree, endure.
Jesu, my lemmon! love.
His woundés sore smart,
The spear all to his heart
And through his side is gone.
Oft when I syke, sigh.
With care I am through-sought; searched through.
When I wake I wyke; languish.
Of sorrow is all my thought.
Alas! men be wood mad.
That swear by the rood swear by the cross.
And sell him for nought
That bought us out of sin.
He bring us to wynne, may he: bliss.
That hath us dear bought!
I add two stanzas of another of like sort.
Man that is in glory and bliss,
And lieth in shame and sin,
He is more than unwis unwise.
That thereof will not blynne. cease.
All this world it goeth away,
Me thinketh it nigheth Doomsday;
Now man goes to ground: perishes.
Jesus Christ that tholed ded endured death.
He may our souls to heaven led lead.
Within a little stound. moment.
Jesus, that was mild and free,
Was with spear y-stongen; stung or pierced.
He was nailéd to the tree,
With scourges y-swongen. lashed.
All for man he tholed shame, endured.
Withouten guilt, withouten blame,
Bothé day and other[8].
Man, full muchel he loved thee, much.
When he woldé make thee free,
And become thy brother.
The simplicity, the tenderness, the devotion of these lyrics is to me wonderful. Observe their realism, as, for instance, in the words: "The stones beoth al wete;" a realism as far removed from the coarseness of a Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who will repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest logical ends until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing the sounds that ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear strongly, too, upon the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless there was the same tendency then as there is now to regard the observance of church-ordinances as the service of Christ, instead of as a means of gathering strength wherewith to serve him by being in the world as he was in the world.
From a poem of forty-eight stanzas I choose five, partly in order to manifest that, although there is in it an occasional appearance of what we should consider sentimentality, allied in nature to that worship of the Virgin which is more a sort of French gallantry than a feeling of reverence, the sense of duty to the Master keeps pace with the profession of devotedness to him. There is so little continuity of thought in it, that the stanzas might almost be arranged anyhow.
Jesu, thy love be all my thought;
Of other thing ne reck I nought; reckon.
I yearn to have thy will y-wrought,
For thou me hast well dear y-bought.
Jesu, well may mine hearté see
That mild and meek he must be,
All unthews and lustés flee, bad habits.
That feelen will the bliss of thee. feel.
For sinful folk, sweet Jesus,
Thou lightest from the high house;
Poor and low thou wert for us.
Thine heart's love thou sendest us.
Jesu, therefore beseech I thee
Thy sweet love thou grant me;
That I thereto worthy be,
Make me worthy that art so free. thou that art.
Jesu, thine help at my ending!
And in that dreadful out-wending, going forth of the spirit.
Send my soul good weryyng, guard.
That I ne dread none evil thing.
I shall next present a short lyric, displaying more of art than this last, giving it now in the old form, and afterwards in a new one, that my reader may see both how it looks in its original dress, and what it means.
Wynter wakeneth al my care,
Nou this leves waxeth bare,
Ofte y sike ant mourne sare, sigh; sore.
When hit cometh in my thoht
Of this worldes joie, how hit goth al to noht.
Now hit is, ant now hit nys, it is not.
Also hit ner nere y-wys,[9]
That moni mon seith soth hit ys,[10]
Al goth bote Godes wille,
Alle we shule deye, thah us like ylle. though it pleases us ill.
Al that gren me graueth grene,[11]
Nou hit faleweth al by-dene; grows yellow: speedily.
Jhesu, help that hit be sene, seen.
Ant shild us from helle;
For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle.[12]
I will now give a modern version of it, in which I have spoiled the original of course, but I hope as little as well may be.
Winter wakeneth all my care;
Now the trees are waxing bare;
Oft my sighs my grief declare[13]
When it comes into my thought
Of this world's joy, how it goes all to nought.
Now it is, and now 'tis not—
As it ne'er had been, I wot.
Hence many say—it is man's lot:
All goeth but God's will;
We all die, though we like it ill.
Green about me grows the grain;
Now it yelloweth all again:
Jesus, give us help amain,
And shield us from hell;
For when or whither I go I cannot tell
There were no doubt many religious poems in a certain amount of circulation of a different cast from these; some a metrical recounting of portions of the Bible history—a kind unsuited to our ends; others a setting forth of the doctrines and duties then believed and taught. Of the former class is one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon poems we have, that of Caedmon, and there are many specimens to be found in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They could, however, have been of little service to the people, so few of whom could read, or could have procured manuscripts if they had been able to use them. A long and elaborate composition of the latter class was written in the reign of Edward II. by William de Shoreham, vicar of Chart-Sutton in Kent. He probably taught his own verses to the people at his catechisings. The intention was, no doubt, by the aid of measure and rhyme to facilitate the remembrance of the facts and doctrines. It consists of a long poem on the Seven Sacraments; of a shorter, associating the Canonical Hours with the principal events of the close of our Lord's life; of an exposition of the Ten Commandments, followed by a kind of treatise on the Seven Cardinal Sins: the fifth part describes the different joys of the Virgin; the sixth, in praise of the Virgin, is perhaps the most poetic; the last is less easy to characterize. The poem is written in the Kentish dialect, and is difficult.
I shall now turn into modern verse a part of "The Canonical Hours," giving its represented foundation of the various acts of worship in the Romish Church throughout the day, from early in the morning to the last service at night. After every fact concerning our Lord, follows an apostrophe to his mother, which I omit, being compelled to choose.
Father's wisdom lifted high,
Lord of us aright—
God and man taken was,
At matin-time by night.
The disciples that were his,
Anon they him forsook;
Sold to Jews and betrayed,
To torture him took.
At the prime Jesus was led
In presence of Pilate,
Where witnesses, false and fell,
Laughed at him for hate.
In the neck they him smote,
Bound his hands of might;
Spit upon that sweet face
That heaven and earth did light.
"Crucify him! crucify!"
They cried at nine o'clock;
A purple cloth they put on him—
To stare at him and mock.
They upon his sweet head
Stuck a thorny crown;
To Calvary his cross he bears.
Pitiful, from the town
Jesus was nailed on the cross
At the noon-tide;
Strong thieves they hanged up,
One on either side.
In his pain, his strong thirst
Quenched they with gall;
So that God's holy Lamb
From sin washed us all.
At the nones Jesus Christ
Felt the hard death;
He to his father "Eloi!" cried,
Gan up yield his breath.
A soldier with a sharp spear
Pierced his right side;
The earth shook, the sun grew dim,
The moment that he died.
He was taken off the cross
At even-song's hour;
The strength left and hid in God
Of our Saviour.
Such death he underwent,
Of life the medicine!
Alas! he was laid adown—
The crown of bliss in pine!
At complines, it was borne away
To the burying,
That noble corpse of Jesus Christ,
Hope of life's coming.
Anointed richly it was,
Fulfilled his holy book:
I pray, Lord, thy passion
In my mind lock.
Childlike simplicity, realism, and tenderness will be evident in this, as in preceding poems, especially in the choice of adjectives. But indeed the combination of certain words had become conventional; as "The hard tree," "The nails great and strong," and such like.
I know I have spoiled the poem in half-translating it thus; but I have rendered it intelligible to all my readers, have not wandered from the original, and have retained a degree of antiqueness both in the tone and the expression.
The oldest form of regular dramatic representation in England was the Miracle Plays, improperly called Mysteries, after the French. To these plays the people of England, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, owed a very large portion of what religious knowledge they possessed, for the prayers were in an unknown tongue, the sermons were very few, and printing was uninvented. The plays themselves, introduced into the country by the Normans, were, in the foolish endeavour to make Normans of Anglo-Saxons, represented in Norman French[14] until the year 1338, when permission was obtained from the Pope to represent them in English.
The word Miracle, in their case, means anything recorded in Scripture. The Miracle Plays had for their subjects the chief incidents of Old and New Testament history; not merely, however, of this history as accepted by the Reformed Church, but of that contained in the Apocryphal Gospels as well. An entire series of these Miracles consisted of short dramatic representations of many single passages of the sacred story. The whole would occupy about three days. It began with the Creation, and ended with the Judgment. That for which the city of Coventry was famous consists of forty-two subjects, with a long prologue. Composed by ecclesiastics, the plays would seem to have been first represented by them only, although afterwards it was not always considered right for the clergy to be concerned with them. The hypocritical Franciscan friar, in "Piers Ploughman's Creed," a poem of the close of the same century, claims as a virtue for his order—
At markets and miracles we meddleth us never.
They would seem likewise to have been first represented in churches and chapels, sometimes in churchyards. Later, when the actors chiefly belonged to city-guilds, they were generally represented in the streets and squares.
It must be borne in mind by any who would understand the influence of these plays upon the people, that much in them appearing to us grotesque, childish, absurd, and even irreverent, had no such appearance in the eyes of the spectators. A certain amount of the impression of absurdity is simply the consequence of antiquity; and even that which is rightly regarded as absurd in the present age, will not at least have produced the discomposing effects of absurdity upon the less developed beholders of that age; just as the quaint pictures with which their churches were decorated may make us smile, but were by them regarded with awe and reverence from their infancy.
It must be confessed that there is in them even occasional coarseness; but that the devil for instance should always be represented as a baffled fool, and made to play the buffoon sometimes after a disgusting fashion, was to them only the treatment he deserved: it was their notion of "poetic justice;" while most of them were too childish to be shocked at the discord thus introduced, and many, we may well hope, too childlike to lose their reverence for the holy because of the proximity of the ridiculous.
There seems to me considerably more of poetic worth scattered through these plays than is generally recognized; and I am glad to be able to do a little to set forth the fact. I cannot doubt that my readers will be interested in such fragments as the scope and design of my book will allow me to offer. Had there been no such passages, I might have regarded the plays as but remotely connected with my purpose, and mentioned them merely as a dramatic form of religious versification. I quote from the Coventry Miracles, better known than either of the other two sets in existence, the Chester Plays and those of Widkirk Abbey. The manuscript from which they have been edited by Mr. Halliwell, one of those students of our early literature to whom we are endlessly indebted for putting valuable things within our reach, is by no means so old as the plays themselves; it bears date 1468, a hundred and thirty years after they appeared in their English dress. Their language is considerably modernized, a process constantly going on where transcription is the means of transmission—not to mention that the actors would of course make many changes to the speech of their own time. I shall modernize it a little further, but only as far as change of spelling will go.
The first of the course is The Creation. God, and angels, and Lucifer appear. That God should here utter, I cannot say announce, the doctrine of the Trinity, may be defended on the ground that he does so in a soliloquy; but when we find afterwards that the same doctrine is one of the subjects upon which the boy Jesus converses with the doctors in the Temple, we cannot help remarking the strange anachronism. Two remarkable lines in the said soliloquy are these:
And all that ever shall have being
It is closed in my mind.
The next scene is the Fall of Man, which is full of poetic feeling and expression both. I must content myself with a few passages.
Here is part of Eve's lamentation, when she is conscious of the death that has laid hold upon her.
Alas that ever that speech was spoken
That the false angel said unto me!
Alas! our Maker's bidding is broken,
For I have touched his own dear tree.
Our fleshly eyes are all unlokyn, unlocked.
Naked for sin ourself we see;
That sorry apple that we have sokyn sucked.
To death hath brought my spouse and me.
When the voice of God is heard, saying,
Adam, that with my hands I made,
Where art thou now? what hast thou wrought?
Adam replies, in two lines, containing the whole truth of man's spiritual condition ever since:
Ah, Lord! for sin our flowers do fade:
I hear thy voice, but I see thee nought.
The vision had vanished, but the voice remained; for they that hear shall live, and to the pure in heart one day the vision shall be restored, for "they shall see God." There is something wonderfully touching in the quaint simplicity of the following words of God to the woman:
Unwise woman, say me why
That thou hast done this foul folly,
And I made thee a great lady,
In Paradise for to play?
As they leave the gates, the angel with the flaming sword ends his speech thus:
This bliss I spere from you right fast; bar.
Herein come ye no more,
Till a child of a maid be born,
And upon the rood rent and torn,
To save all that ye have forlorn, lost.
Your wealth for to restore.
Eve laments bitterly, and at length offers her throat to her husband, praying him to strangle her:
Now stumble we on stalk and stone;
My wit away from me is gone;
Writhe on to my neck-bone
With hardness of thine hand.
Adam replies—not over politely—
Wife, thy wit is not worth a rush;
and goes on to make what excuse for themselves he can in a very simple and touching manner:
Our hap was hard, our wit was nesche, soft, weak, still in use in
To Paradise when we were brought: [some provinces.
My weeping shall be long fresh;
Short liking shall be long bought. pleasure.
The scene ends with these words from Eve:
Alas, that ever we wrought this sin!
Our bodily sustenance for to win,
Ye must delve and I shall spin,
In care to lead our life.
Cain and Abel follows; then Noah's Flood, in which God says,
They shall not dread the flood's flow;
then Abraham's Sacrifice; then Moses and the Two Tables; then The Prophets, each of whom prophesies of the coming Saviour; after which we find ourselves in the Apocryphal Gospels, in the midst of much nonsense about Anna and Joachim, the parents of Mary, about Joseph and Mary and the birth of Jesus, till we arrive at The Shepherds and The Magi, The Purification, The Slaughter of the Innocents, The Disputing in the Temple, The Baptism, The Temptation, and The Woman taken in Adultery, at which point I pause for the sake of the remarkable tradition embodied in the scene—that each of the woman's accusers thought Jesus was writing his individual sins on the ground. While he is writing the second time, the Pharisee, the Accuser, and the Scribe, who have chiefly sustained the dialogue hitherto, separate, each going into a different part of the Temple, and soliloquize thus:
Pharisee. Alas! alas! I am ashamed!
I am afeared that I shall die;
All my sins even properly named
Yon prophet did write before mine eye.
If that my fellows that did espy,
They will tell it both far and wide;
My sinful living if they outcry,
I wot not where my head to hide.
Accuser. Alas! for sorrow mine heart doth bleed,
All my sins yon man did write;
If that my fellows to them took heed,
I cannot me from death acquite.
I would I were hid somewhere out of sight,
That men should me nowhere see nor know;
If I be taken I am aflyght afraid.
In mekyl shame I shall be throwe. much.
Scribe. Alas the time that this betyd! happened.
Right bitter care doth me embrace.
All my sins be now unhid,
Yon man before me them all doth trace.
If I were once out of this place,
To suffer death great and vengeance able,[15]
I will never come before his face,
Though I should die in a stable.
Upon this follows The Raising of Lazarus; next The Council of the Jews, to which the devil appears as a Prologue, dressed in the extreme of the fashion of the day, which he sets forth minutely enough in his speech also. The Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; The Betrayal; King Herod; The Trial of Christ; Pilate's Wife's Dream come next; to the subject of the last of which the curious but generally accepted origin is given, that it was inspired by Satan, anxious that Jesus should not be slain, because he dreaded the mischief he would work when he entered Hades or Hell, for there is no distinction between them either here or in the Apocryphal Gospel whence the Descent into Hell is taken. Then follow The Crucifixion and The Descent into Hell—often called the Harrowing of Hell—that is, the making war upon or despoiling of hell,[16] for which the authority is a passage in the Gospel of Nicodemus, full of a certain florid Eastern grandeur. I need hardly remind my readers that the Apostles' Creed, as it now stands, contains the same legend in the form of an article of faith. The allusions to it are frequent in the early literature of Christendom.
The soul of Christ comes to the gates of hell, and says:
Undo your gates of sorwatorie; place of sorrow.
On man's soul I have memorie;
There cometh now the king of glory,
These gates for to breke!
Ye devils that are here within,
Hell gates ye shall unpin;
I shall deliver man's kin—
From woe I will them wreke. avenge.
* * * * *
Against me it were but waste
To holdyn or to standyn fast;
Hell-lodge may not last
Against the king of glory.
Thy dark door down I throw;
My fair friends now well I know;
I shall them bring, reckoned by row,
Out of their purgatory!
The Burial; The Resurrection; The Three Maries; Christ appearing to Mary; The Pilgrim of Emmaus; The Ascension; The Descent of the Holy Ghost; The Assumption of the Virgin; and Doomsday, close the series. I have quoted enough to show that these plays must, in the condition of the people to whom they were presented, have had much to do with their religious education.
This fourteenth century was a wonderful time of outbursting life. Although we cannot claim the Miracles as entirely English products, being in all probability translations from the Norman-French, yet the fact that they were thus translated is one remarkable amongst many in this dawn of the victory of England over her conquerors. From this time, English prospered and French decayed. Their own language was now, so far, authorized as the medium of religious instruction to the people, while a similar change had passed upon processes at law; and, most significant of all, the greatest poet of the time, and one of the three greatest poets as yet of all English time, wrote, although a courtier, in the language of the people. Before selecting some of Chaucer's religious verses, however, I must speak of two or three poems by other writers.
The first of these is The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman—a poem of great influence in the same direction as the writings of Wycliffe. It is a vision and an allegory, wherein the vices of the time, especially those of the clergy, are unsparingly dealt with. Towards the close it loses itself in a metaphysical allegory concerning Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.[17] I do not find much poetry in it. There is more, to my mind, in another poem, written some thirty or forty years later, the author of which is unknown, perhaps because he was an imitator of William Langland, the author of the Vision. It is called Pierce the Plough-man's Crede. Both are written after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxon poetry, and not after the fashion of the Anglo-Norman, of which distinction a little more presently. Its object is to contrast the life and character of the four orders of friars with those of a simple Christian. There is considerable humour in the working plan of the poem.
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 blee[18] than was the bright sun;
Her rudd[19] redder than the rose that on the rise[20] 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.