2. Religious and Didactic Poetry. Like most of the other poetry of the period, this kind was strongly imitative, piously credulous, and enormous in length.
(a) The Ormulum, by a certain Orm, or Ormin, is usually dated at 1200. As it survives it is an enormous fragment, twenty thousand lines in length, and composed in the East Midland dialect. It consists of a large number of religious homilies addressed to a person called Walter. Of poetical merit the poem is destitute; but it is unique in the immense care shown over a curious and complicated system of spelling, into which we have not the space to enter. Its metrical form is noteworthy: a rigidly iambic measure, rhymeless, arranged in alternate lines of eight and seven syllables respectively. This regularity of meter is another unique feature of the poem, which we illustrate by an extract:
| An Romanisshe Kaserrking | A Roman Kaiser-king |
| Wass Augusstuss [gh]ehatenn | Was called Augustus |
| And he wass wurrthenn Kaserrking | And he became Kaiser-king |
| Off all mannkinn onn eorthe, | Of all mankind on earth, |
| And he gann thenkenn off himmsellf | And he gan think of himself |
| And off hiss micle riche. | And of his muckle kingdom, |
| And he bigann to thenkenn tha, | And he began to think |
| Swa summ the goddspell kithethth | Just as the gospel tells |
| Off thatt he wollde witenn wel | Of what he would well know |
| Hu mikell fehh himm come, | How much money [fee] would come to him |
| [GH]iff himm off all hiss kinedom. | If to him of all his kingdom |
| Illc mann an penning [gh]æfe. | Each man a penny gave. |
(b) The Owl and the Nightingale, the date of which is commonly given as 1250, is attributed to Nicholas of Guildford. The poem consists of a long argument between the nightingale, representing the lighter joys of life, and the owl, which stands for wisdom and sobriety. The poem is among the most lively of its kind, and the argument tends to become heated. In meter it is rhyming octosyllabic couplets, much more regular than was common at the time.
(c) The Orison to Our Lady, Genesis and Exodus, the Bestiary, the Moral Ode, the Proverbs of Alfred, and the Proverbs of Hendyng are usually placed about the middle of the thirteenth century. Of originality there is little to comment upon; but as metrical experiments they are of great importance. The Proverbs show some regular stanza-formation, and the Moral Ode is remarkable for the steadiness and maturity of its measure, a long line coming very close to the fourteener.
(d) The Cursor Mundi was composed about 1320. It is a kind of religious epic, twenty-four thousand lines long, composed in the Northern dialect. The author, who divides his history into seven stages, draws upon both the Old and the New Testaments. The meter shows a distinct advance in its grip of the octosyllabic couplet.
(e) Richard Rolle of Hampole, who died in 1349, is one of the few contemporary figures about whom definite personal facts are recorded. He was born in Yorkshire, educated at Oxford, and ran away from home to become a hermit. Subsequently he removed to Hampole, near Doncaster, where he enjoyed a great reputation for sanctity and good works.
He wrote some miscellaneous prose and a few short poems, but his chief importance lies in his authorship of the long poem The Pricke of Conscience. This work, which is based upon the writings of the early Christian Fathers, describes the joys and sorrows of a man’s life as he is affected in turn by good and evil. The meter is a close approximation to the octosyllabic couplet, which shows extensions and variations that often resemble the heroic measure. It has been suggested that Hampole is the first English writer to use the heroic couplet; but it is almost certain that his heroic couplets are accidental.
(f) The Alliterative Poems. In a unique manuscript, now preserved in the British Museum, are found four remarkably fine poems in the West Midland dialect: Pearl, Cleannesse, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. There is no indication of the authorship, but judging from the similarity of the style it is considered likely that they are by the same poet. The date is about 1300. The first three poems are religious in theme, and of them Pearl is undoubtedly the best. This poem, half allegorical in nature, tells of a vision in which the poet seeks his precious pearl that has slipped away from him. In his quest he spies his pearl, which seems to be the symbol of a dead maiden, and obtains a glimpse of the Eternal Jerusalem. The poem, which contains long discussions between the poet and the pearl, has some passages of real, moving beauty, and there is a sweet melancholy inflection in some of the verses that is rare indeed among the fumbling poetasters of the time. The meter is extraordinarily complicated: heavily alliterated twelve-lined stanzas, with intricate rhymes arranged on a triple basis (see p. 149). Cleannesse and Patience, more didactic in theme, are of less interest and beauty, but they have an exultation and stern energy that make them conspicuous among the poems of the period. They are composed in a kind of alliterative blank verse. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the most captivating of the romances. Its meter also is freely alliterated and built into irregular rhyming stanzas which sometimes run into twenty lines.
3. The Metrical Romances. The great number of the romances that now appear in our literature can be classified according to subject.