_, generally assigned
to the reign of Henry III. (1216-1272), an _estrif_, or dispute, in
which the owl represents the ascetic and the nightingale the aesthetic
view of life. The debate is conducted with much animation and a spirited
use of proverbial wisdom. _The Land of Cokaygne_ is an amusing little
poem of some two hundred lines, belonging to the class of _fabliaux_,
short humorous tales or satirical pieces in verse. It describes a
lubber-land, or fool's paradise, where the geese fly down all roasted on
the spit, bringing garlic in their bills for their dressing, and where
there is a nunnery upon a river of sweet milk, and an abbey of white
monks and gray, whose walls, like the hall of little King Pepin, are "of
pie-crust and pastry crust," with flouren cakes for the shingles and fat
puddings for the pins.

There are a few songs dating from about 1300, and mostly found in a
single collection (Harl. MS., 2253), which are almost the only English
verse before Chaucer that has any sweetness to a modern ear. They are
written in French strophic forms in the southern dialect, and sometimes
have an intermixture of French and Latin lines. They are musical, fresh,
simple, and many of them very pretty. They celebrate the gladness of
spring with its cuckoos and throstle-cocks, its daisies and woodruff.

[Footnote 1: Hue.]
[Footnote 2: Those.]
[Footnote 3: Realm.]
[Footnote 4: Bowstring.]

When the nightingale sings the woodes waxen green;
Leaf and grass and blossom spring in Averil, I ween,
And love is to my herte gone with a spear so keen,
Night and day my blood it drinks, my herte doth me tene.[5]

Others are love plaints to "Alysoun" or some other lady whose "name is
in a note of the nightingale;" whose eyes are as gray as glass, and her
skin as "red as rose on ris." [6] Some employ a burden or refrain.

Blow, northern wind,
Blow thou me my sweeting,
Blow, northern wind, blow, blow, blow!

Others are touched with a light melancholy at the coming of winter.

Winter wakeneth all my care
Now these leaves waxeth bare,
Oft I sigh and mourne sare
When it cometh in my thought
Of this worldes joy, how it goeth all to nought.

Some of these poems are love songs to Christ or the Virgin, composed in
the warm language of earthly passion. The sentiment of chivalry united
with the ecstatic reveries of the cloister had produced Mariolatry, and
the imagery of the Song of Solomon, in which Christ wooes