Reason, who is
defended by a golden targe or shield from the attacks of love. Here
again the rural landscape forms a background to his mimic action.
Amazons dressed in green fight the battle of Cupid, and vanquish
Reason, then magically vanish and leave the poet to awake from his
dream. 'The Golden Targe' was a poem to be read in the royal presence,
when the court assembled after a day's hunting or an afternoon of
archery; but it is filled with the ethereal loveliness which only the
true poet beholds.

It is in 'The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins' that Dunbar touches the
note of seriousness, which characterizes his race and his individual
genius. This satire is not so unsparing an indictment as the vision of
Piers Ploughman, and yet it provokes inevitable comparison with the
older poem. In a dream the poet sees heaven and hell opened. It is the
eve of Ash Wednesday, and the Devil has commanded a dance to be
performed by those spirits that had never received absolution. In
obedience to this command the Seven Deadly Sins present a masque
before his Satanic Majesty, and it is in the description of this
grisly performance that Dunbar reveals a new aspect of power. The
comedy here is not comic, but grotesque and horrid. The vision of the
Scot is the vision that came to the poets of the 'Inferno' and
'Paradise Lost,' and it shows that his imagination was capable of the
loftiest flights.

After the melancholy day of Flodden Field, the Scottish laureateship
ceased to exist, but it is remarkable that so prominent a man as
Dunbar should so completely have disappeared from contemporary view
that his subsequent career and the time of his death are matters of
doubt. His period is given as between the years 1465 and 1530, but
these dates are only approximate.

Had Dunbar held his genius in hand as completely as did Chaucer, his
accomplishment would doubtless have been greater than it was. Yet his
place in literature is that of one of the most important poets of the
fifteenth century, the age of Caxton and bookmaking, the time of that
first flush of radiance which ushered in the full day of Spenser and
Shakespeare.

THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE

Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past,
And Appryle had, with her silver schouris,
Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast,
And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris,
Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris
Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt,
Quhois