_mourning greatly._
And Mary wepynde, _weeping._
For pain that thee is on.

Oft when I sike _sigh._
And makie my moan,
Well ill though me like,
Wonder is it none.[7]
When I see hang high
And bitter pains dreye, _dree, endure._
Jesu, my lemmon! _love._
His woundes sore smart,
The spear all to his heart
And through his side is gone.

Oft when I syke, _sigh._
With care I am through-sought; _searched through._
When I wake I wyke; _languish._
Of sorrow is all my thought.
Alas! men be wood _mad._
That swear by the rood _swear by the cross._
And sell him for nought
That bought us out of sin.
He bring us to wynne, _may he: bliss._
That hath us dear bought!

I add two stanzas of another of like sort.

Man that is in glory and bliss,
And lieth in shame and sin,
He is more than unwis _unwise._
That thereof will not blynne. _cease._
All this world it goeth away,
Me thinketh it nigheth Doomsday;
Now man goes to ground: _perishes._
Jesus Christ that tholed ded _endured death._
He may our souls to heaven led _lead._
Within a little stound. _moment._

Jesus, that was mild and free,
Was with spear y-stongen; _stung_ or _pierced._
He was nailed to the tree,
With scourges y-swongen. _lashed._
All for man he tholed shame, _endured._
Withouten guilt, withouten blame,
Bothe day and other[8].
Man, full muchel he loved thee, _much._
When he wolde make thee free,
And become thy brother.

The simplicity, the tenderness, the devotion of these lyrics is to me
wonderful. Observe their realism, as, for instance, in the words: "The
stones beoth al wete;" a realism as far removed from the coarseness of a
Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who will
repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest logical ends
until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing the sounds that
ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear strongly, too, upon
the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless there was the same
tendency then as there is now to regard the observance of
church-ordinances as the s