Englands Antiphon | Page 5

livid.
Thou hangest all of blood bloody.
So high upon the rood
Between thieves tuo-- two.
Who may sigh more?
Mary weepeth sore,
And sees all this woe.
The nails be too strong,
The smiths are too sly; skilful.
Thou
bleedest all too long;
The tree is all too high;
The stones be all wete!
wet.
Alas, Jesu, the sweet!
For now friend hast thou none,
But Saint John to-mournynde, mourning greatly. And Mary wepynde,

weeping.
For pain that thee is on.
Oft when I sike sigh.
And makie my moan,
Well ill though me like,

Wonder is it none.[7]
When I see hang high
And bitter pains dreye, dree, endure.
Jesu, my lemmon! love.
His woundés sore smart,
The spear all to his heart
And through his
side is gone.
Oft when I syke, sigh.
With care I am through-sought; searched
through. When I wake I wyke; languish.
Of sorrow is all my thought.
Alas! men be wood mad.
That swear by the rood swear by the
cross.
And sell him for nought
That bought us out of sin.
He bring us to
wynne, may he: bliss.
That hath us dear bought!
I add two stanzas of another of like sort.
Man that is in glory and bliss,
And lieth in shame and sin,
He is
more than unwis unwise.
That thereof will not blynne. cease.
All
this world it goeth away,
Me thinketh it nigheth Doomsday;
Now
man goes to ground: perishes.
Jesus Christ that tholed ded endured
death.
He may our souls to heaven led lead.
Within a little stound.
moment.
Jesus, that was mild and free,
Was with spear y-stongen; stung_ or
_pierced. He was nailéd to the tree,
With scourges y-swongen. lashed.

All for man he tholed shame, endured.
Withouten guilt, withouten
blame,
Bothé day and other[8].
Man, full muchel he loved thee,
much.
When he woldé make thee free,
And become thy brother.
The simplicity, the tenderness, the devotion of these lyrics is to me
wonderful. Observe their realism, as, for instance, in the words: "The

stones beoth al wete;" a realism as far removed from the coarseness of
a Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who
will repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest
logical ends until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing
the sounds that ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear
strongly, too, upon the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless
there was the same tendency then as there is now to regard the
observance of
church-ordinances as the service of Christ, instead of
as a means of gathering strength wherewith to serve him by being in
the world as he was in the world.
From a poem of forty-eight stanzas I choose five, partly in order to
manifest that, although there is in it an occasional appearance of what
we should consider sentimentality, allied in nature to that worship of
the Virgin which is more a sort of French gallantry than a feeling of
reverence, the sense of duty to the Master keeps pace with the
profession of devotedness to him. There is so little continuity of
thought in it, that the stanzas might almost be arranged anyhow.
Jesu, thy love be all my thought;
Of other thing ne reck I nought;
reckon.
I yearn to have thy will y-wrought,
For thou me hast well
dear y-bought.
Jesu, well may mine hearté see
That mild and meek he must be,
All
unthews and lustés flee, bad habits.
That feelen will the bliss of thee.
feel.
For sinful folk, sweet Jesus,
Thou lightest from the high house;

Poor and low thou wert for us.
Thine heart's love thou sendest us.
Jesu, therefore beseech I thee
Thy sweet love thou grant me;
That I
thereto worthy be,
Make me worthy that art so free. thou that art.
Jesu, thine help at my ending!
And in that dreadful out-wending,
going forth of the spirit. Send my soul good weryyng, guard.
That I
ne dread none evil thing.

I shall next present a short lyric, displaying more of art than this last,
giving it now in the old form, and afterwards in a new one, that my
reader may see both how it looks in its original dress, and what it
means.
Wynter