e of baffled souls endure,
To see the evil that they may not cure.

For on sweet Malvern Hill one morn he lay,
Drowsed by the music of the constant stream:--
Loud sang the cuckoo, cuckoo!--for the May
Breathed summer: summer floating like a dream
From the far fields of childhood, with a gleam
Of alien freshness on her forehead fair,
And Heaven itself within the common air.

Then on the mead in vision Langland saw
A pilgrim-throng; not missal-bright as those
Whom Chaucer's hand surpass'd itself to draw,
Gay as the lark, and brilliant as the rose;--
But such as dungeon foul or spital shows,
Or the serf's fever-den, or field of fight,
When festering sunbeams on the wounded smite.

No sainted shrine the motley wanderers seek,
Pilgrims of life upon the field of scorn,
Mocking and mock'd; with plague and hunger weak,
And haggard faces bleach'd as those who mourn,
And footsteps redden'd with the trodden thorn;
Blind stretching hands that grope for truth in vain,
Across a twilight demon-haunted plain.

A land whose children toil and rot like beasts,
Robbers and robb'd by turns, the dreamer sees:--
Land of poor-grinding lords and faithless priests,
Where wisdom starves and folly thrones at ease
'Mid lavishness and lusts and knaveries;
Times out of joint, a universe of lies,
Till Love divine appear in Ploughman's guise

To burn the gilded tares and save the land,
Risen from the grave and walking earth again:--
--And as he dream'd and kiss'd the nail-pierced hand,
A hundred towers their Easter voices rain
In silver showers o'er hill and vale and plain,
And the air throbb'd with sweetness, and he woke
And all the dream in light and music broke.

--He look'd around, and saw the world he left
When to that visionary realm of song
His spirit fled from bonds of flesh bereft;
And on the vision he lay musing long,
As o'er his soul rude minstrel-echoes throng,
Old measures half-disused; and grasp'd his pen,
And drew his cottage-Christ for homely men.

Thus Langland also took his pilgrimage;
Rough lone knight-errant on uncourtly ways,
And wrong and woe were charter'd on his page,
With some horizon-glimpse of sweeter days.
And on the land the message of his lays
Smote like the strong North-wind, and cleansed the sky
With wholesome blast and bitter clarion-cry,

Summoning the people in the Ploughman's name.
--So fought his fight, and pass'd unknown away;
Seeking no other praise, no sculptured fame
Nor laureate honours