That whilom bare that sweete savour,
In summer, that sweete tide;
Ne is no queene so stark ne stour,
Ne no lady so bright in bower
That death ne shall by glide;
Whoso will flesh-lust forgon,
And heaven bliss abide,
On Jesu be his thought anon,
That thirled was his side.
This poem is a good text to prove the long ancestry of modern verse, and the community of the nations, often very remote from definite intercourse between them. And there is one phrase in this stanza which goes back to the older world: ‘bright in bower’ is from the ancient heroic verse; it may be found in Icelandic, in the Elder Edda.