Reason makes a speech to the entire nation, assembled in that plain which is discovered from the heights of Malvern, and where we found ourselves at the beginning of the Visions.
Then a change of scene. These scene-shiftings are frequent, unexpected, and rapid as in an opera. "Then, ..." says the poet, without further explanation: then the scene shifts; the plain has disappeared; a new personage, Repentance, now listens to the Confession of the Deadly Sins. This is one of the most striking passages of the poem; in spite of their abstract names, these sins are tangible realities; the author describes their shape and their costumes; some are bony, others are tun-bellied; singular abstractions with warts on their noses! We were just now in Parliament, with the victims of the powerful and the wicked; we now hear the general confession of England in the time of the Plantagenets.[647]
That the conversion may be a lasting one, Truth must be sought after. Piers Plowman appears, a mystic personage, a variable emblem, that here simply represents the man of "good will," and elsewhere stands for Christ himself. He teaches the way; gates must be entered, castles encountered, and the Ten Commandments will be passed through. Above all, he teaches every one his present duties, his active and definite obligations; he protests against useless and unoccupied lives, against those who have since been termed "dilettante," for whom life is a sight, and who limit their function to being sight-seers, to amusing themselves and judging others. All those who live upon earth have actual practical duties, even you, lovely ladies:
And ye lovely ladyes · with youre longe fyngres.
All must defend, or till, or sow the field of life. The ploughing commences, but it is soon apparent that some pretend to labour and labour not; they are lazy or talkative, and sing songs. Piers succeeds in mastering them by the help of Hunger. Thanks to Hunger and Truth, distant possibilities are seen of a reform, of a future Golden Age, an island of England that shall be similar to the island of Utopia, imagined later by another Englishman.
The vision rises and fades away; another vision and another pilgrimage commence, and occupy all the remainder of the poem, that is, from the eleventh to the twenty-third passus (C. text). The poet endeavours to join in their dwellings Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest; in other terms: Good-life, Better-life, and Best-life. All this part of the book is filled with sermons, most of them energetic, eloquent, spirited, full of masterly touches, leaving an ineffaceable impression on the memory and the heart: sermon of Study on the Bible and on Arts and Letters; sermons of Clergye and of Ymagynatyf; dialogue between Hawkyn (active life) and Patience; sermons of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Several visions are intermingled with these sermons: visions of the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem, and of the Passion; visions of hell attacked by Jesus, and defended by Satan and Lucifer with guns, "brasene gonnes," a then recent invention, which appeared particularly diabolical. Milton's Satan, in spite of having had three hundred years in which to improve his tactics, will find nothing better; his batteries are ranged in good order; a seraph stands behind each cannon with lighted match; at the first discharge, angels and archangels fall to the ground:
By thousands, Angel on Archangel rolled.
They are not killed, but painfully suffer from a knowledge that they look ridiculous: "an indecent overthrow," they call it. The fiends, exhilarated by this sight, roar noisily, and it is hard indeed for us to take a tragical view of the massacre.[648]
In the Visions, Christ, conqueror of hell, liberates the souls that await his coming, and the poet awakes to the sounds of bells on Easter morning.
The poem ends amid doleful apparitions; now comes Antichrist, then Old Age, and Death. Years have fled, death draws near; only a short time remains to live; how employ it to the best advantage? (Dobet). Advise me, Nature! cries the poet. "Love!" replies Nature: