Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

'Consummatum est!' quoth Christ and comsed1 for to swoon Piteously and pale as prisoner that dieth.

[ocr errors]

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;
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 came out of deep graves,
And told why that tempest so long time dured;
'For a bitter battle' the dead body said;
'Life and Death in this darkness
But shall no wight wit witterly •

the one for-doth the other, who shall have the mastery

Ere Sunday, about sun-rising' and sank with that to earth.

[blocks in formation]

Lo! how the sun gan lock her light in her-self,

When she saw Him suffer death

Lo! the earth, for heaviness
Quaked as [a] quick thing

8

[ocr errors]

sons

.

who sun and sea made!

that He would death suffer,

and al to-quashed the rocks!

Lo hell might not hold but opened, when God tholed',
And let out Simon's 10
to see Him hang on rood.
Now shall Lucifer 'lieve it though him loath think;
For Jesus, as a giant · with a gin" cometh yond,
To break and to beat adown
And to have out all

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

all that be against Him,

of them that Him liketh.

'Suffer we,' said Truth 'I hear and see both

[ocr errors]

A Spirit speak to hell and bids unspar the gates;
Attollite portas, principes, vestras; &c.'

A voice loud in that light to Lucifer cried,

[ocr errors]

'Princes of this palace prest

12 undo the gates,

For here cometh with crown the king of all glory.'
Then sighed Satan and said to hell,

[ocr errors]

'Such a light, against our leave Lazarus it fetched; Cold care and cumbrance

[ocr errors]

is come to us all.

[blocks in formation]

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 12 quickly.

into it.

"device, plan.

[ocr errors]

If this king come in mankind will be fetch,

And lead it where Lazar is and lightly me bind.
Patriarchs and prophets have parled' hereof long,

That such a lord and a light shall lead them all hence.
But rise up, Ragamuffin !

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors]

and reach me the bars

beat, with thy dam',

and His light stop.

Ere we through brightness be blent · bar we the gates!
Check we, and chain we and each chine' stop,

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

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.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Brimstone boiling burning out-cast it

All hot on their heads that enter nigh the walls.

.

Set bows of brake and brazen guns,

[ocr errors]

And shoot out shot enough His sheltrums 10 to blend".
Set Mahound at the mangonel 12 · and mill-stones throw,
With crooks and with calthrops

[ocr errors]

13

a-cloy we them each one!'

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

14

nor devil's queintise 15;

Both this lord and this light is long ago I knew him.
May no death this Lord dere 14
And, where He will, is His way
If He reave me of my right

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

That Adam and Eve and all their issue

Should die with dool 18

If that they touched a

and here dwell ever,

tree or took thereof an apple.

Thus this lord of light such a law made;

[ocr errors]

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

[ocr errors]

seven thousand winters,

[ocr errors]

And [He] never was there-against and now will begin,

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

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

[ocr errors]

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

For thou got them with guile

Against His love and His leave

and His garden broke,

on His land yedest3,

Not in form of a fiend but in form of an adder;
And enticedest Eve to eat by herself,

[ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]

As two gods, with God both good and ill;

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Thus haddest thou them out and hither at the last.

9

[ocr errors]

It is not graithly 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,

11

So hath God beguiled us all in going of a wy11'

[blocks in formation]

'What lord art Thou?' quoth Lucifer

'The lord of might and Duke of this dim place

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][merged small]

of main that made all things.

anon undo the gates,

[ocr errors]

That Christ may come in 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.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

Lucifer might not look so light him ablent 13 ;

And those that our Lord loved

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors]

They durst not look on our Lord the least of them all,

But let Him lead forth which Him list

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

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

[ocr errors]

Clarior est solito post maxima nebula Phebus,

Post inimicitias clarior est et amor.

[ocr errors]

'After sharpest showers,' quoth Peace most sheen is the sun, Is no weather warmer than after watery clouds,

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

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,

[ocr errors]

And Peace, through patience all perils stopped.'

*

Truth trumped them, and sang

[ocr errors]

*

Te Deum laudamus;

And then luted Love in a loud note,

Ecce quam bonum et quam iocundum est habitare fratres

[merged small][ocr errors]

Till the day dawned these damsels danced,

[ocr errors]

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!

[ocr errors]

For God's blessed body it bare, for our boot',
And it a-feareth 2 the fiend; for such is the might,

May no grisly ghost

1

1 help, remedy.

Iglide where it shadoweth !'

2 frightens away.

JOHN GOWER.

[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. The 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

« PredošláPokračovať »