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.