xxi.
Where is and shall be eternall
Joy, incomparable myrth without heaviness,
Love with Charity and grace Celestiall,
Lasting interminable, lacking no goodness.
In that Citty virtue shall never cease,
And felicity no Soule shall misse,
Magnifying the name of the Kinge of Blisse.
xxii.
This compendious Extract compiled was new,
A thousand yeere 5 hundred fower and twenty
From the birthe of our Saviour Christ Jesue,
By the Reverend Father of worthy memory,
Willm Malverne, Abbot of this Monastery,
Whome God preserve in long life and prosperity,
And after death him graunt Eternall Felicity.[1]
But about the time that Tyndale was giving the English Bible to his countrymen in their own tongue, and that Cromwell was hammering the monks, a new soul seems to have been breathed into English poetry. Surrey and Wyat stand at the head of the new school, and show themselves Teutons of the right breed; they clearly had no silly love for lumbering Latinized stuff. The true path, pointed out by them, was soon to be followed in this Sixteenth Century by Buckhurst, Gascoigne, Sidney, and by two men greater still. Even Southwell, who died in the Pope's behalf, cleaves fast to the new Teutonic diction of his brother bards. The Reformation
- ↑ Hearne's Robert of Gloucester, ii. 584. The old spelling has been partly changed.
