The disciples that were his,
Anon they him forsook;
Sold to Jews and betrayed,
To torture him took.

At the prime Jesus was led
In presence of Pilate,
Where witnesses, false and fell,
Laughed at him for hate.
In the neck they him smote,
Bound his hands of might;
Spit upon that sweet face
That heaven and earth did light.

"Crucify him! crucify!"
They cried at nine o'clock;
A purple cloth they put on him--
To stare at him and mock.
They upon his sweet head
Stuck a thorny crown;
To Calvary his cross he bears.
Pitiful, from the town

Jesus was nailed on the cross
At the noon-tide;
Strong thieves they hanged up,
One on either side.
In his pain, his strong thirst
Quenched they with gall;
So that God's holy Lamb
From sin washed us all.

At the nones Jesus Christ
Felt the hard death;
He to his father "Eloi!" cried,
Gan up yield his breath.
A soldier with a sharp spear
Pierced his right side;
The earth shook, the sun grew dim,
The moment that he died.

He was taken off the cross
At even-song's hour;
The strength left and hid in God
Of our Saviour.
Such death he underwent,
Of life the medicine!
Alas! he was laid adown--
The crown of bliss in pine!

At complines, it was borne away
To the burying,
That noble corpse of Jesus Christ,
Hope of life's coming.
Anointed richly it was,
Fulfilled his holy book:
I pray, Lord, thy passion
In my mind lock.

Childlike simplicity, realism, and tenderness will be evident in this, as
in preceding poems, especially in the choice of adjectives. But indeed
the combination of certain words had become conventional; as "The hard
tree," "The nails great and strong," and such like.

I know I have spoiled the poem in half-translating it thus; but I have
rendered it intelligible to all my readers, have not wandered from the
original, and have retained a degree of antiqueness both in the tone and
the expression.

CHAPTER II.

THE MIRACLE PLAYS AND OTHER POEMS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

The oldest form of regular dramatic representation in England was the
Miracle Plays, improperly called Mysteries, after the French. To these
plays the people of England, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
owed a very large portion of what religious knowledge they possessed, for
the prayers were in an unknown tongue, t