Consummatum est!' quoth Christ 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;

The hard rock all to-rove3 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

6

the one for-doth" the other,

But shall no wight wit witterly who shall have the mastery Ere Sunday, about sun-rising'

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

When she saw Him suffer death who sun and sea made!

that He would death suffer,

and al to-quashed the rocks!

but opened, when God tholed',

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 all that be against Him,

'I hear and see both
and bids unspar the gates;

Attollite portas, principes, vestras; &c.'

A voice loud in that light to Lucifer cried,

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

'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

6.

Ere we through brightness be blent bar we the gates!
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

8

our cattle to save.

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".

Set Mahound at the mangonel 12. and mill-stones throw,

With crooks and with calthrops

a-cloy 13 we them each one!'

'Listen!' quoth Lucifer'for I this lord know,
Both this lord and this light
May no death this Lord dere
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
For He Himself it said
That Adam and Eve
Should die with dool 18

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

that Sire is of hell, and all their issue

or took thereof an apple.

Thus this lord of light · such a law made;

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

19

And, since we have been seised 19 seven thousand winters,
And [He] never was there-against ・ and now will begin,

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.

9

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, So hath God beguiled us all in going of a wy1l'

*

*

*

*

*

anon undo the gates,

11,

the king's son of heaven.' brake

'What lord art Thou?' quoth Lucifer a voice aloud said,
'The lord of might and of main that made all things.
Duke of this dim place
That Christ may come in
And with that breath hell
For any wy or ward 12
Patriarchs and prophets
Sang with saint John

with all Belial's bars;

populus in tenebris

ecce agnus Dei!

so light him ablent 13;

And those that our Lord loved with that light forth flew.

Ashtoreth and all others hid them in hernes

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,

than after watery clouds,

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 called Kitte my wife

'Arise! and go reverence

and with that I awaked,

and Calote my daughter,

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 boot',

And it a-feareth 2 the fiend;

glide where it shadoweth.

for such is the might,

* 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