Then seth erth unto erth thys ys all owrys.
When erth apon erth hath bylde hys bowrys,
Then schall erth for erth suffur many hard schowrys.
"Erth goth apon erth as man apon mowld,
Lyke as erth apon erth never goo schold,
Erth goth apon erth as gelsteryng gold,
And yet schall erth unto erth rather than he wold."
Dugdale, in his Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 517., tells us that John de Stratford, who was Archbishop of Canterbury in the reign of Edward III., built a chapel on the south side of the church, "to the honour of God and of St. Thomas the Martyr;" and as at p. 521. he describes it as "in the south ile of the said church," the west wall of this chapel answers very well the description of the position of the painting, and inscription. But in The Beauties of England and Wales, vol. xv. p. 238., the chapel of the gild of the Holy Cross, in the centre of the town, is mentioned as the place in which the pictures were discovered, during some repairs which it underwent in the year 1804.
I have since ascertained that the work to which Longfellow refers is Weaver's Account of Stratford-upon-Avon.