[28]Ic wat indryhtne æþelum deorne ȝiest in ȝeardum, þæm se grimma ne mæg hunger sceððan ne se hata þurst, yldo ne adle [ne se enga deað], ȝif him arlice esne þenað, se þe agan sceal [his ȝeongorscipe] on þam siðfæte: hy gesunde æt ham findaþ witode him wiste ⁊ blisse, cnosles unrim, care, ȝif se esne his blaforde hyreð yfle frean on fore, ne wile forht wesan broþer oþrum: him þæt bam sceðeð, þonne hy from bearme begen hweorfað anre magan ellorfuse moddor ⁊ sweostor. This sets forth the same conception of the duality in man as is represented in the O.E. _Speech of the Soul to the Body_, and in the whole group of _Soul and Body_ poems, and the idea recurs constantly in other monastic texts, cf. Morris, _O. E. Miscellany_, iii (_Sinners Beware_), p. 83:-- 326. þe feondes heom forþ ledeþ Boþe lychom and saule. 331-336. Þe saule seyþ to þe lychome, Accursed wurþe þi nome, Þin heaued and þin heorte. Þu vs hauest iwroht þes schome, And alle þene eche grome Vs schall euer smerte. _MS. Harl._ 2253, fol. 106, v^o, l. 7: þe fleysh stont aȝeyn þe gost. These two fundamental ideas of the transitoriness and hence worthlessness of man’s earthly part, and the cleavage between it and his spiritual part, lie at the root of much of the mediaeval literature, and represent the two not incompatible extremes to which the monastic ideal of life, from its very one-sidedness, was capable of leading: on the one hand a certain morbid materialism, on the other an ascetic mysticism. Nor can it be denied that the mediaeval mind took a certain grim pleasure in dwelling upon the more grotesque aspect of these things. The O.E. poet found the same enjoyment in describing his ‘Ȝifer’-- [29]se wyrm, þe þa ȝeaȝlas beoð nædle scearpran: se genydeð to ærest eallra on þam eorðsciæfe, as the painters of the _Dance of Death_ in the drawing of their skeletons and emblems of mortality, or the Gothic carver in his gargoyles. Perhaps, too, some satisfaction in dwelling upon the hollowness of earthly joys, and the bitter fate of those who took their fill of them, was not lacking to a few of those who had turned their backs upon them.