Jesu, that art, withouten lees, _lies._
Almighty God in trinity,
Cease these wars, and send us peace,
With lasting love and charity.

Jesu, that art the ghostly stone _spiritual._
Of all holy church in middle-erde, _the world._
Bring thy folds and flocks in one,
And rule them rightly with one herd.

We now approach the second revival of literature, preceded in England by
the arrival of the art of printing; after which we find ourselves walking
in a morning twilight, knowing something of the authors as well as of
their work.

I have little more to offer from this century. There are a few religious
poems by John Skelton, who was tutor to Henry VIII. But such poetry,
though he was a clergyman, was not much in Skelton's manner of mind. We
have far better of a similar sort already.

A new sort of dramatic representation had by this time greatly encroached
upon the old Miracle Plays. The fresh growth was called Morals or Moral
Plays. In them we see the losing victory of invention over the
imagination that works with given facts. No doubt in the Moral Plays
there is more exercise of intellect as well as of ingenuity; for they
consist of metaphysical facts turned into individual existences by
personification, and their relations then dramatized by allegory. But
their poetry is greatly inferior both in character and execution to that
of the Miracles. They have a religious tendency, as everything moral must
have, and sometimes they go even farther, as in one, for instance, called