England's Antiphon

Ant shild us from helle;
For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle.[12 - Not is a contraction for ne wat, know not. "For I know not whither I must go, nor how long here I dwell." I think y is omitted by mistake before duelle.]

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 - This is very poor compared with the original.]
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.

CHAPTER II

THE MIRACLE PLAYS AND OTHER POEMS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

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 - I owe almost all my information on the history of these plays to Mr.Collier's well-known work on English Dramatic Poetry.] until the year 1338, when permission was obtained from the Pope to represent them in English.