"Why I move this matere is moste for the pore, For in her lyknesse owre lord ofte hath ben y-knowe."
_The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman._ B. PASSUS XI.
"'I am Ymagynatyf,' quod he, 'idel was I nevere.'"
_The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman._ B. PASSUS XII.
There were a many singers on the hill-top. They twittered in the gorse; they whistled from the old hawthorn tree, amid the white may; they sprang to heaven, shaking off melody in their flight; and one, russet-clad, lay at his length against the green slope, murmuring English in his throat.
"'T was in a May morning," he said, "'T was in a May morning,"--and he loitered over the words and drew out the "morwening" very long and sweet. Then, because there was a singing mote of a lark in the misty blue above him, his own song dropped back into his breast, and he waited.
He was young and lank, and his hair was yellow-red. He followed the lark up into the bright heaven with wide, unblinking eyes. The bird fell to earth; somewhere unseen a cuckoo chanted. Three sheep on the brow of the hill moved forward, slowly feeding.
"'T was on a May morning, on the Ma'vern Hills," whispered the singer, "on the Ma'vern Hills;" and he fell in a dream.
The Great Hill of the Malverns stood over against the dreamer, a bare, up-climbing majesty, a vasty cone, making its goal in long green strides. Below, a wrinkle hinted a pass, and on the high flat saddle between the Great Hill and the Small, the grass was trodden, albeit not worn away. A bell called softly from a valley hidden eastward; and up from the southwest, slantwise across a corner of the hill, a child came running into the dream, a gay lad in scarlet hosen and a green short coat, and shoes of fine leather. His eyes made a wonderment in his face, but his lips curled a smile at the wonder. A dark elf-lock danced on his forehead.
The dreamer moved no whit, but waited, level-eyed.
"What be these tricks?" cried the child in a voice betwixt a laugh and a gasp. "I saw thee from yonder hill, and thou wert distant a day's journey. Then the bell rang, and lo! I am here before the clapper 's swung to rest."
He in the russet smiled, but answered nothing.
The little lad looked down and studied him. "I 've missed my way," he said.