In the midst of these trials and sorrows, Langland had one refuge: his book. His poem made up for those things which life had denied him. Why make verses, why write, said Ymagynatyf to him; are there not "bokes ynowe?"[3] But without his book, Langland could not have lived, like those fathers whose existence is bound up in that of their child, and who die if he dies. When he had finished it, and though his intention was never to touch it again, for in it he announced his own death, he still began it over again, once, twice; he worked at it all his life. What was the end of that life? No one knows. Some indications tend to show that in his later years he left London, where he had led his troubled life to return to the Western country.[642] There we should like to think of him, soothed, healed, resigned, and watching that sun decline in the west which he had seen rise, many years before, "in a somere seyson." II. In this summer season, in the freshness of the morning, to the musical sound of waters, "it sowned so murrie," the poet, lingering on the summit of Malvern hills, falls asleep, and the first of his visions begins. He contemplates Al the welthe of this worlde | and the woo bothe; and, in an immense plain, a "feld ful of folke," he notices the bustle and movements of mankind, Of alle maner of men | the mene and the riche. Mankind is represented by typical specimens of all sorts: knights, monks, parsons, workmen singing French songs, cooks crying: Hot pies! "Hote pyes, hote!" pardoners, pilgrims, preachers, beggars, janglers who will not work, japers and "mynstralles" that sell "glee." They are, or nearly so, the same beings Chaucer assembled at the "Tabard" inn, on the eve of his pilgrimage to Canterbury. This crowd has likewise a pilgrimage to make, not, however, on the sunny high-road that leads from Southwark to the shrine of St. Thomas. No, they journey through abstract countries, and have to accomplish, some three hundred years before Bunyan's Christian, their pilgrim's progress in search of Truth and of Supreme Good. A lady appears, who explains the landscape and the vision; she is Holy-Church. Yonder tower is the tower of Truth. This castle is the "Castel of Care" that contains "Wronge." Holy-Church points out how mankind ought to live, and teaches kings and knights their duties with regard to Truth.