vices
of the time, especially those of the clergy, are unsparingly dealt with.
Towards the close it loses itself in a metaphysical allegory concerning
Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.[17] I do not find much poetry in it. There is
more, to my mind, in another poem, written some thirty or forty years
later, the author of which is unknown, perhaps because he was an imitator
of William Langland, the author of the _Vision_. It is called _Pierce the
Plough-man's Crede_. Both are written after the fashion of the
Anglo-Saxon poetry, and not after the fashion of the Anglo-Norman, of
which distinction a little more presently. Its object is to contrast the
life and character of the four orders of friars with those of a simple
Christian. There is considerable humour in the working plan of the poem.

A certain poor man says he has succeeded in learning his A B C, his
Paternoster, and his Ave Mary, but he cannot, do what he will, learn his
Creed. He sets out, therefore, to find some one whose life, according
with his profession, may give him a hope that he will teach him his creed
aright. He applies to the friars. One after another, every order abuses
the other; nor this only, but for money offers either to teach him his
creed, or to absolve him for ignorance of the same. He finds no helper
until he falls in with Pierce the Ploughman, of whose poverty he gives a
most touching description. I shall, however, only quote some lines of
_The Believe_ as taught by the Ploughman, and this principally to show
the nature of the versification:

Leve thou on our Lord God, that all the world wroughte; _believe._
Holy heaven upon high wholly he formed;
And is almighty himself over all his workes;
And wrought as his will was, the world and the heaven;
And on gentle Jesus Christ, engendered of himselven,
His own only Son, Lord over all y-knowen.

* * * * *

With thorn y-crowned, crucified, and on the cross died;
And sythen his blessed body was in a stone buried; _after that._
And descended adown to the dark helle,
And fetched out our forefathers; and they full fain weren. _glad._
The third day readily, himself rose from death,
And on a stone there he stood, he stey up to heaven. _where: ascended._

Here there is no rhyme. There is measure--a dance-movement in the verse;
and likewise, in most of the lines, what was essential to Anglo-Saxon
verse--three or more words begin