A DITTY

On the uncertainty of this Life, and the approach of Death.

Winter wakeneth all my care;
Now these leavés waxeth bare.
Oft I sigh, and mourné sare,
When it cometh in my thought,

Of this world's joy, how it go'th all to nought!

Now it is, and now it n'is,

All so it ne'er, n'were I wis;

That many men saith, sooth it is,
All goeth but God's will:

All we shall die, though us like ill.3

All that grain me groweth green;
Now, it falloweth 4 all-by dene: 5

Jesu help, that it be seen,

And shield us from hell,

6

For I n'ot' whither I shall, ne how long here dwell.

As if it had never been.

3 Though we may dislike it ? 5 Presently.

Passeth away.

4 Fadeth.

6 The meaning seems to be, " May

"Jesu help us so that his help may be manifest.”

7 Ne wot, know not.

LOVE SONG.

Between March and Averil,

When spray beginneth to spring,
The little fowl hath their will

In their lud' to sing.

I live in love-longing

2

For seemlokest of all thing

She may me bliss bring,

I am in her bandoun.3

An hendy4 hap I have y-hent,5

6

Ichot from heaven it is me sent,

From all women my love is lent,
And 'light' on Alisoun.

On hen her hair is fair enow,
Her brow brown, her eye black:
With lossum cheer she on me lok 10

With middle small and well y-mok.

⚫ Songs, or odes. The word leudi occurs, in the same sense, in the barbarous Latin of the times, as Mr. Pinkerton has justly observed.

Nights, when I wend and wake,

For thee my wonges 4 waxeth wan;
Lady, all for thy sake

Longing is y-lent me on!

In world is none so wyter 5 man,
That all her bounty tell can:

Her swire is whiter than the swan,

It is not impossible that Chaucer, at the same time that he ridiculed the romances, may have intended to laugh at the fashionable love-songs of his age; for in his rhyme of Sir Thopas he has borrowed two, apparently affected phrases, from the foregoing composition.

Sire Thopas fell in love-longing

All when he heard the throstle sing.

And afterwards:

Me dreamed all this night, pardie,
An elf-queen shall my lemman be,
And sleep under my gore.

To suffer. Sax.

2 Awhile.

3 Perhaps, "Most graceful in dress." The word occurs in the same sense in Dunbar's "Twa mariit Women," verse 78. Ungain is still used in the provinces for the opposite idea; and gore appears to be the same with gear, dress, from the Saxon gearwa; vestis.

• Song.

To the same period with the foregoing we ought, perhaps, to refer the following short descriptive song, preserved by Sir John Hawkins in his History of Music:

Summer is y-comen in
Loud sing cuckoo :

Groweth seed, and bloweth mead,

And springeth the wood now,

Sing cuckoo.

Ewe bleateth after lamb,

Loweth after calf cow:

Bullock starteth,

Buck verteth,2

Merry sing cuckoo !

Cuckoo, cuckoo,

Well sings thou cuckoo,

Ne swick thou never now.

The first poet who occurs in the beginning of the fourteenth century, is Robert Manning, commonly called Robert de Brunne. He was, as far as we know, merely a translator. His first work, says Mr.Warton, was a metrical paraphrase of a French book, written by Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln,

' Blooms.

3 Cease.

• Goes to harbour among the fern.