But unto a wood that was fast by
I went forth alone and boldely,

And held the way downe by a brooke side,
Til I came to a land of white and grene,
So faire one had I never in been,

The ground was grene y-powdrèd with daisie,
The floures and the groves alike high

All grene and white-was nothing else seene.

Could anything be more exquisitely true yet more absolutely simple than the little touch of simple white and green with which the poet brings a spring meadow under the sunlight before our eyes?

Chaucer has been compared to an April day, full in itself of warmth and brightness, but followed often by rough weeks and frosty nights, which nip all the early blossoms. He died in 1400, and the whole remainder of the fifteenth century does not produce a single pre-eminent poet. The jealousy and opposition of the clergy to all novelties, a prescient intuition of the day when they should smart under the scourge of such poets as Skelton, Lyndsay and Butler,-the absence of all patronage, the troubles in the civil wars of the Roses, in which, says the chronicler, 'the sound of the church bells was not heard for drums and trumpets,' may have contributed to the dearth of prominent poets. Possibly, however, to the middle of this century is due, in its oldest form, that grand old ballad of Chevy Chase, which Sir Philip Sidney used to say 'stirred his heart like the blast of a trumpet'; and it is at least probable that during this prosaic period many another of our great ballads sprang from the heart of the people. These ballads form a distinct and separate phase of literature, and are well worth study and attention. Even the

ruggedness of their antiquity, and the uncertainty of their original form in the multitudinous shapes they have assumed in the traditions of the people, only make them more venerable, just as one venerates an old sword all the more for the rust upon its scabbard and the hacks and dents upon its blade. They deal in strong situations, and describe with unsparing yet reverent truth the fiercest passions of human nature. Undoubtedly they are hot, rude, graphic: he whose mind is not strong enough to walk among scenes of battle and murder and sudden death; he whose 'slothful loves and dainty sympathies' are too fine spun to face the darkest and most unspoken tragedies of human life, must turn elsewhere. Yet, as Mr. Allingham observes, 'All is not darkness and tempest in this region of song; gay stories of true love with a happy ending are many; and they who love enchantments, and to be borne off into fairy land, may have their wish at the turning of a leaf.'

Her

Take the well-known ballad of Helen of Kirkconnel. lover is talking to Helen, when his rival aims a shot at him, which the maiden receives into her own heart :

O think na ye my heart was sair,

When my love dropt and spak na mair!
Then did she swoon wi' meikle care

On fair Kirkconnel lea;

And I went down the water side,
None but my foe to be my guide,
None but my foe to be my guide
On fair Kirkconnel lea.

I crossed the stream, the sword did draw,

I hacked him into pieces sma'

I hacked him into pieces sma',

For her sake that died for me.

And then, after this terrific outburst of savage vengeance, mark the sudden gush of unspeakable love, tenderness, and regret, in the very next verse:—

O Helen fair beyond compare,
I'll mak' a garland o' your hair,
Shall bind my heart for evermair
Until the day I dee.

I wad I were where Helen lies;
Night and day on me she cries,
And I am weary of the skies,

For her sake that died for me.

The same qualities come out, perhaps with yet more striking intensity, in the ballad of Edom o' Gordon. This traitor makes a raid upon a castle in the lord's absence, and tries to seize the person of his lady. Seeing the armed men in the distance, she thinks it is her lord returning, arrays herself in her robes, and prepares a banquet; but when Gordon comes the gates are shut, and she mounts the tower to parley with him. He orders her to come down, on pain of being burnt in the castle with her three babes; in reply she bids her henchman load a gun, and fires at Edom.

She stood upon her castle wa',

And let twa bullets flee;

She missed that bloody butcher's heart,

And only rased his knee.

'Set fire to the house,' quo' fause Gordon,

Wud wi' dule and ire;

'Fause ladye, ye sall rue that shot,

As ye burn in the fire.'

Without a single break in the narrative, instantly, in the poet's imagination, the castle is in flames, and the thick smoke is rolling through it in choking volumes towards the chamber of the little ones.

O then bespak her little son,

Sat on the nurse's knee:

'O mither dear, gie owre this house,
For the reek it smothers me.'

'I wad gie a' my gowd, my bairn,
Sae wad I a' my fee,

For ae blast of the western wind
To blaw the reek frae thee.'

O then bespak her daughter dear,
She was baith jimp and sma':
'O, row me in a pair o' sheets,
And throw me owre the wa'.'

They rowed her in a pair o' sheets,
And throwed her owre the wa';
But on the point o' Gordon's spear
She gat a deadly fa'.

O bonnie, bonnie was her mouth,
And cherry were her cheeks,
And clear, clear was her yellow hair,
Whereon the red bloud dreeps.

Then wi' his spear he turned her owre;
O gin her face was wan!

He said, 'Ye are the first that e'er

I wished alive again.'

He cam, and lookit again at her,

O gin her skin was white!
'I might hae spared that bonnie face

To hae been some man's delight.

'Busk and boun, my merry men a',
For ill dooms I do guess:

I canna look on that bonnie face,
As it lies on the grass.'

Stricken with this new and wild remorse,-aghast to see the sweet flower-face of the young girl, with its dew of blood upon the yellow hair,-the wretch flies. Meanwhile, the lord riding back to the castle finds it in flames, and urges his men forward:

Then some they rade, and some they ran,

Out owre the grass and bent;

But ere the foremost could win up,

Baith ladye and babes were brent.

And after the Gordon he is gane,

As fast as he might dri'e;

And soon i' the Gordon's foul heart's bluid
He's wroken his fair ladye.

After reading such a horrible tragedy as this, one asks, Is it a fit subject for poetry? is it right to deal with such scenes? The answer is simple. It is not right, if they be told simply to harrow our feelings with idle and fruitless emotion, which is the vice of modern sensationalism; but it is right, if the sin and crime be spoken of with due gravity and rightness of feeling. Pity and terror may be evoked, but, as was the case in ancient tragedy, they may be evoked only for purifying purposes. It is a sin and an error to paint the horrors of life for the sole purpose of beguiling an idle hour; but it is right for the poet to gaze upon them,-right for him to see life steadily, and see it whole,' if he does so with a due sense of its solemn and unspeakable import.