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. 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, * who sun and sea made! 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 voice loud in that light to Lucifer cried, '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. 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, 8 Brimstone boiling burning out-cast it 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 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. but warn Him of the perils. And, since He is so leal a Lord I 'lieve that He will not And, since we have been seised 19 seven thousand winters, 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, 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; 12 • Patriarchs and prophets · populus in tenebris 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, Many hundreds of angels · harped then and sang, 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; 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, 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 |