Page:Tixall Poetry.djvu/383

 first Italian painters. Sometimes she is represented kneeling on the ground, and embracing the foot of the cross, while the blood of the Redeemer is trickling down upon her head. In other pictures, she appears standing, "her golden haires" dishevelled, her hands clasped upon her breast, and her eyes fixed on the cross, in an agony of unutterable sorrow.

In the manuscript there is also "raging." The author seems to have been doubtful which epithet to prefer.

Among the works of Chaucer, is a long poem of more than 700 lines, entitled "The Lamentacion of Marie Magdaleine, taken out of St Origen, wherein Mary Magdalen lamenteth the cruell Death of her Saviour Christ."

It is composed in stanzas of seven lines, of ten syllables each; a measure of verse, which Chaucer uses in this, and many other considerable works, and which he is supposed to have introduced into the English language. "It obtained afterward," says Godwin, (Life of Chaucer, vol. i. p. 234,) "the name of Rythm royal, was the favourite measure of a long succession of English poets, and is particularly dear to all genuine lovers of English poetry, as having been employed by our admirable Spenser, in his two exquisite Hymns of Love and Beauty. Perhaps the circle of English poetry does not afford a more grateful harmony, particularly as applied to compositions of the length of these last mentioned."

This poem of Chaucer's, though pathetic in some parts, is somewhat deformed by the frequent interspersion of Latin words, and lines taken from the Psalms and Evangelists; which, together with the obsoleteness of the language, give it rather a burlesque and macaronic appearance. As it is perhaps the least read of all his poems, I have selected a few stanzas from it, principally with the view of exhibiting the singular cast of sentiment, and turn of expression, which a poet thought allowable, in those days, when treating a sacred subject. It begins as follows: