et we flee:--
Snatch from the hell and the Enemy's breath,
From the Prince of the Air, from the terror by night that cometh:--
From the Black Death, Christ save us!
The black black Death!

_That foul monster_; The Lernaean Hydra of Greek legend.

_From the marshes_; The drought which preceded the plague in England, and
may have predisposed to its reception, was followed by mist, in which the
people fancied they saw the disease palpably advancing.

_From Cathaya_; The plague was heard of in Central Asia in 1333; it
reached Constantinople in 1347.

_The City of Flowers_; Florence, where the ravages of the plague were
immortalized in the _Decamerone_ of Boccaccio.

_The pest boil_; Seems to have been the enlarged and discharging gland by
which the specific blood-poison of the plague relieved itself. A 'muddy
glistening' of the eye is noticed as one of the symptoms.

_The common bed_; More than 50,000 are said to have been buried on the
site of the Charter House.

_Albespyne_; Hawthorn.

_Half the giant oak_; 'Of the three or four millions who then formed the
population of England, more than one-half were swept away': (_Green_, B.
IV: ch. iii).

THE PILGRIM AND THE PLOUGHMAN

1382

It is a dream, I know:--Yet on the past
Of this dear England if in thought we gaze,
About her seems a constant sunshine cast;
In summer calm we see and golden haze
The little London of Plantagenet days;
Quaint labyrinthine knot of toppling lanes,
And thorny spires aflame with starlike vanes.

Our silver Thames all yet unspoil'd and clear;
The many-buttress'd bridge that stems the tide;
Black-timber'd wharves; arcaded walls, that rear
Long, golden-crested roofs of civic pride:--
While flaunting galliots by the gardens glide,
And on Spring's frolic air the May-song swells,
Mix'd with the music of a thousand bells.

Beyond the bridge a mazy forest swims,
Great spars and sails and flame-tongued flags on high,
Wedged round the quay, a-throng with ruddy limbs
And faces bronzed beneath another sky:
And 'mid the press sits one with aspect shy
And downcast eyes of watching, and, the while,
The deep observance of an inward smile.

In hooded mantle gray he smiled and sate,
With ink-horn at his knees and scroll and pen.
And took the toll and register'd the freight,
'Mid noise of clattering cranes and strife of men:
And all that moved and spoke was in his ken,
With lines and hues like Nature's own design'd