said, 'Ah, dear brother, why have ye tarried so long from me?'"

After the dusky barge has borne Arthur away from mortal sight, Malory
writes: "Here in this world he changed his life." A century before,
Chaucer had with equal simplicity voiced the Saxon faith:--

"His spirit chaunged hous."[1]

Sometimes this prose narrative, in its condensation and expression of
feeling, shows something of the poetic spirit. When the damsel on the
white palfrey sees that her knightly lover has been killed, she
cries:--

"O Balin! two bodies
hast thou slain and one
heart, and two hearts in
one body, and two souls
thou hast lost.' And
therewith she took the
sword from her love that
lay dead, and as she took
it, she fell to the ground
in a swoon."

[Illustration: MALORY'S MORTE D'ARTHUR. _From De Worde's Ed.,
1529_.]

Malory's work, rather than Layamon's _Brut_, has been the storehouse
to which later poets have turned. Many nineteenth-century poets are
indebted to Malory. Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_, Matthew Arnold's
_Death of Tristram_, Swinburne's _Tristram of Lyonesse_, and William
Morris's _Defense of Guinevere_ were inspired by the _Morte d'Arthur_.
Few English prose works have had more influence on the poetry of the
Victorian age.

Scottish Poetry.--The best poetry of the fifteenth century was
written in the Northern dialect, which was spoken north of the river
Humber. This language was just as much English as the Midland tongue
in which Chaucer wrote. Not until the sixteenth century was this
dialect called Scotch.

James I. of Scotland (1406-1437) spent nineteen years of his youth
as a prisoner in England. During his captivity in Windsor Castle, he
fell in love with a maiden, seen at her orisons in the garden, and
wrote a poem, called the _King's Quair_, to tell the story of his
love. Although the _King's Quair_ is suggestive of _The Knightes
Tale_, and indeed owes much to Chaucer, it is a poetic record of
genuine and successful love. These four lines from the spring song
show real feeling for nature:--

"Worshippe, ye that lovers be, this May,
For of your bliss the kalends are begun,
And sing with us, 'Away, Winter, away,
Come, Summer, come, the sweet season and sun!'"

Much of this Scotch poetry is remarkable for showing in that early age
a genuine love of nature. Changes are not rung on some typical
landscape, copied from an Italian versifier. The Northern poet had his