Of al this world, and eke governeresse
Of heven; and represseth his justise
After thyn wille: and therfore in witnesse
He hath the crowned in so ryal wise.1

T.

Temple' devoute! ther God ches his wonning,
Fro which these misbeleeved deprived been,
Το you myn soule penitent I bringe,
Receve me, for I can no ferther fleen.
With thornis venemouse, hevene Quene!
For which the erth accursed was ful sore,
I am so wounded, as ye may
wel sene,
That I am lost almost, it smert so sore,

3

V.

Virgine! that art so noble of appareyle,
That ledest us into the heighe toure
Of Paradise, thou me wisse and counseyle,
How I may have thy grace and thy succoure:
Al have I ben in filth and in errour,
Lady! on that countrey thou me adjourne,
That cleped is thyn bench of fresche flour,
Ther as that mercy ever shal sojourne.

X.

Xpe1 thine Sone that in this world alight
Upon a crosse to suffere his passioun,

1 St. Bernard interprets the Woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars,' Apoc. xii., to mean the Mother of Christ. Egredimini, filiæ Sion, et vídete regem Salomonem in diademate, quo coronavit eum mater sua. Verum hoc aliàs. Interim sane ingredimini magis, et videte reginam in diademate quo coronavit eam Filius suus. In capite, inquit, ejus corona stellarum duodecim.-S. BERNARD—Apoc. xii.

2 St. Paul calls all Christians the Temple of God.-1 Cor. iii. 16. 3 By the thorns are meant sins. Thus, in medieval pictures, our Lord is represented, in His character of the Good Shepherd, as extricating a lost sheep from the briars and thorns in which it had entangled itself.

4 Sir Harris Nicolas has changed this contracted word into Xen, without any authority. It is a contraction for Christe, the X being the Greek x, and the p, the Greek P, or r.

And suffred eke that Longeus his herte pight,'
And made his herte blode renne adoun,
And al this was for my salvacioun:
And I to him am fals and eke unkind,

1 There is an old tradition that the soldier who pierced our Lord's side with his lance (John, xix. 34) was a certain blind man, named Longius, or Longinus; that his hands were imbrued with the blood and water which flowed from the wound along the shaft, and, that on his accidentally rubbing his eyes with them, his sight was restored. The miracle is thus represented in The Chester Plays, edited by Mr. Wright for the Shakspeare Society :

CAYPHAS.

'Longes, take the speare in hande
And put from thee, thou ney wounde.

'LONGEUS.

O Lorde I see ney sea nor lande
This seven yeaire in good faye.

" QUARTUS JUDEUS.

'Have this speare, and take goode heede,
Thou must doe as the bushoppe thee bede
A thing that is of full greate nede,
To warne I hold you woode.

'LONGYUS.

'I will doe as ye bide me,

But on your perill it shall be ;

What I doe I may not see,

Whether it be evil or good.

[Tunc LONGIUS lanced perforat latus
Christi, dicens :-

Highe king of heaven I thee praye,
What I have done well wote I nere,

But on my handes, and on my speare,
Out water ronneth through;

And on my eyes some can fall,

Inat I may see both on and all,

O Lorde, wherever be this wall [well]

That this watter come froo?

Alas! alas! and wayleawaie!
What deed have I done to daie?

A man I see, south to saye

I have slain in the streete.

But this I hope be Christe vereye,

That sicke and blynde has healed aye

Of mercye Lorde, I thee praie

For I wiste not what I did.'

And yet he wil not myn dampnacioun:
This thanke I you, succour of al mankind!

Y.

Ysaac was figure of his dethe certeyne,1
That so fer forth his fader wold obeye,
That him ne rought nothing for to be sleyen:
Right so thy Sone list, as a lambe, to deye:*
Now, Lady ful of mercy! I you preye,
Sith he his mercy sured me so large,
Be ye not scant, for al we singe or seye,
That ye ben fro vengeaunce aye our targe.

Z.

Zacharie you clepith the open welle,

That wischte sinful soule out of his gilte;
Therfor this lesson oute I wil to telle,

4

That, nere thyn tender herte, we were spilte.
Now, Lady brighte! sith thou canst and wilt
Ben to the sede of Adam merciable,
Bringe us to that paleis that is builte
To penitentis, that ben to mercy able."

EXPLICIT.

1 For this figurative interpretation there is the authority of S. Paul -Heb. xi. 19.

2 Thus S. John Baptist exclaims, Behold the Lamb of God.'John i. 36.

3 Zechariah xiii. 1.

4 That is, Were it not for thy tender heart.'

5 That is, That have such dispositions as render them fit subjects to obtain the mercy of God.'

THE BOKE OF THE DUCHESSE;

OR, THE DETHE OF BLANCHE.

[THIS piece was commonly known as Chauceres Dreme till the publication by Speght, in 1597, of the poem to which that name more properly belongs. All subsequent editors have implicitly followed the corrupt text of Speght. The present edition is the first in which The Boke of the Duchesse has been collated, it being generally supposed that there was no MS. of it in existence. The MS. with which this collation has been made is contained in a miscellaneous volume marked 16 in the Fairfax collection, Bod. Lib. It is on parchment, beautifully illuminated, and may be assigned to the beginning or middle of the 15th century. A comparison with Speght's text will show that the variations are numerous and important. There is another MS. of this poem in the Bodleian, marked 638. It is partly on parchment and partly on paper, and is evidently a copy of the former.

In this poem Chaucer again resorts to his favourite framework of a dream. Falling asleep over Ovid's story of Ceyx and Halcyone, he hears the merry sounds of huntsmen and hounds, and starts from his bed to follow them to the woods. Here, while awaiting the unharbouring of the deer, he sees a knight sitting dolefully under an oak, lamenting the recent death of his lady. Having ascertained the cause and history of his sorrow, Chaucer rides home, and is suddenly awakened by the sound of the great clock of a neighbouring castle striking twelve. The knight is John of Gaunt; and the lady his Duchess, Blanche. The identity of the latter is ascertained by a passage where she is called 'faire White,' which, says the mourning knight, 'was my ladyes name righte.'

This determines the date of the poem, which must have been written between 1369, when the Duchess died, and Michaelmas, 1371, when John of Gaunt married his second wife, Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel of Spain, at Bordeaux.]

See post, p. 454.

I

HAVE grete wondre, be this lyghte,
How that I lyve; for day ne nyglite
I may nat slepe welnygh nought.
I have so many an ydel thought,
Purely for defaulte of slepe,

That, by my trouthe I take no kepe
Of nothing, how hyt commeth or gooth.
Ne me nys nothynge leve nor looth;
Al is ylyche gode to me,

Joye or sorwe, wher so hyt be.
For I have felynge in nothynge,
But, as it were a mased thynge,
Alway in poynt to falle adoun;
For sorweful ymagynacioun
Is alwey hooly in my mynde.

And wel ye woote, ageines kynde
Hyt were to lyven in this wyse;
For nature wolde not suffyse,
To noone ertherly creature,
Not longe tyme to endure
Withoute slepe, and be in sorwe.
And I ne may, ne nyghte ne morwe,
Slepe; and thys melancholye
And drede I have for to dye,
Defaulte of slepe and hevynesse,
Hath sleyne my spirite of quyknesse,
That I have loste al lustyhede;
Suche fantasies ben in myn hede,
So I not what is best to doo.1

But men myght axe me, why soo

1 The reader will have observed that Chaucer often, as in this case, concludes the sense with the first line of a couplet. Leigh Hunt says that he derived this peculiarity from the French; but the whole structure of his octosyllabic verse is taken from the Anglo-Norman Romances. The Saxon poetry is written in the alliterative verse of which The Visions of Piers Ploughman are an example. The resumption of the narrative in the second line of the distich has somewhat of the fine effect of a fugue in music, in which the phrase, while it is being closed by one class of voices, is heard simultaneously breaking out again from