Down the Strand; It is thus that Langland describes himself and his feelings of dissatisfaction with the world.
That worst woe; Literature, even ancient literature, has no phrase more deeply felt and pathetic than the words which the Persian nobleman at the feast in Thebes before Plataea addressed to Thersander of Orchomenus:—[ Εχθιστη οδυνη των εν ανθρωποισι, πολλα φρονεοντα μηδενος κρατεειν]: (Herodotus, IX: xvi).
One morn he lay; The Vision opens with a picture of the poet asleep on Malvern Hill: the last of the added poems closing as he wakes with the Easter chimes.
Old measures; Langland’s metre ‘is more uncouth than that of his predecessors’ (Hallam, Mid. Ag. Ch. IX: Pt. iii).
In the Minster; Chaucer was buried at the entrance of S. Benet’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
JEANNE D’ARC
1424
So many stars in heaven,—
Flowers in the meadow that shine;
—This little one of Domremy,
What special grace is thine?
By the fairy beech and the fountain
What but a child with thy brothers?
Among the maids of the valley
Art more than one among others?
Chosen darling of Heaven,
Yet at heart wast only a child!
And for thee the wild things of Nature
Sot aside their nature wild:—
The brown-eyed fawn of the forest
Came silently glancing upon thee;
The squirrel slipp’d down from the fir,
And nestled his gentleness on thee.