One of the best of the metrical romances is "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which may be read as a measure of all the rest. If, as is commonly believed, the unknown author of "Sir Gawain" wrote also "The Pearl" (a beautiful old elegy, or poem of grief, which immortalizes a father's love for his little girl), he was the greatest poet of the early Middle-English period. Unfortunately for us, he wrote not in the king's English or speech of London (which became modern English) but in a different dialect, and his poems should be read in a present-day version; else will the beauty of his work be lost in our effort to understand his language. Other types of early literature are the riming chronicles or verse histories (such as Layamon's _Brut_, a famous poem, in which the Arthurian legends appear as part of English history), stories of travel, translations, religious poems, books of devotion, miracle plays, fables, satires, ballads, hymns, lullabies, lyrics of love and nature,--an astonishing collection for so ancient a time, indicative at once of our changing standards of poetry and of our unchanging human nature. For the feelings which inspired or gave welcome to these poems, some five or six hundred years ago, are precisely the same feelings which warm the heart of a poet and his readers to-day. There is nothing ancient but the spelling in this exquisite Lullaby, for instance, which was sung on Christmas eve: He cam also stylle Ther his moder was As dew in Aprylle That fallyt on the gras; He cam also stylle To his moderes bowr As dew in Aprylle That fallyt on the flour; He cam also stylle Ther his moder lay As dew in Aprylle That fallyt on the spray. [Footnote: In reading this beautiful old lullaby the _e_ in "stylle" and "Aprylle" should be lightly sounded, like _a_ in "China."] Or witness this other fragment from an old love song, which reflects the feeling of one who "would fain make some mirth" but who finds his heart sad within him: Now wold I fayne som myrthis make All oneli for my ladys sake, When I hir se; But now I am so ferre from hir Hit will nat be. Thogh I be long out of hir sight, I am hir man both day and night, And so will be; Wherfor, wold God as I love hir That she lovd me! When she is mery, then I am glad; When she is sory, then am I sad, And causë whi: For he livith nat that lovith hir So well as I. She sayth that she hath seen hit wreten That 'seldyn seen is soon foryeten.' Hit is nat so; For in good feith, save oneli hir, I love no moo. Wherfor I pray, both night and day, That she may cast al care away, And leve in rest That evermo, where'er she be, I love hir best; And I to hir for to be trew, And never chaunge her for noon new Unto myne ende; And that I may in hir servise For evyr amend.