I now turn from those poems of national scope and wide social interest, bearing their share, doubtless, in the growth of the great changes that showed themselves at length more than a century after, and from the poem I have just quoted of a yet wider human interest, to one of another tone, springing from the grief that attends love, and the aspiration born of the grief. It is, nevertheless, wide in its scope as the conflict between Death and Life, although dealing with the individual and not with the race. The former poems named of Pierce Ploughman are the cry of John the Baptist in the English wilderness; this is the longing of Hannah at home, having left her little son in the temple. The latter _seems_ a poorer matter; but it is an easier thing to utter grand words of just condemnation, than, in the silence of the chamber, or with the well-known household-life around, forcing upon the consciousness only the law of things seen, to regard with steadfastness the blank left by a beloved form, and believe in the unseen, the marvellous, the eternal. In the midst of "the light of common day," with all the persistently common things pressing upon the despairing heart, to hold fast, after what fashion may be possible, the vanishing song that has changed its key, is indeed a victory over the flesh, however childish the forms in which the faith may embody itself, however weak the logic with which it may defend its intrenchments. The poem which has led me to make these remarks is in many respects noteworthy. It is very different in style and language from any I have yet given. There was little communication to blend the different modes of speech prevailing in different parts of the country. It belongs,[24] according to students of English, to the Midland dialect of the fourteenth century. The author is beyond conjecture. It is not merely the antiquity of the language that causes its difficulty, but the accumulated weight of artistically fantastic and puzzling requirements which the writer had laid upon himself in its composition. The nature of these I shall be enabled to show by printing the first twelve lines almost as they stand in the manuscript. Perle plesaunte to prynces paye, To clanly clos in golde so clere! Oute of oryent I hardyly saye, Ne proued I neuer her precios pere; So rounde, so reken in vche araye, So smal, so smothe her sydes were! Quere-so-euer I iugged gemmes gaye, I sette hyr sengeley in synglure: Allas! I leste hyr in on erbere, Thurh gresse to grounde hit fro me yot; I dewyne for-dolked of luf daungere, Of that pryuy perle with-outen spot.