I slumbered in a sleeping it sounded so merry."

If you will look back you will see that this poetry is very much
more like Layamon's than like the poetry of Havelok the Dane.
Although people had, for many years, been writing rhyming verse,
Langland has, you see, gone back to the old alliterative poetry.
Perhaps it was that, living far away in the country, Langland had
written his poem before he had heard of the new kind of rhyming
verses, for news traveled slowly in those days.

Two hundred years later, when The Vision of Piers the Ploughman
was first printed, the printer in his preface explained
alliterative verse very well. "Langland wrote altogether in
metre," he says, "but not after the manner of our rimers that
write nowadays (for his verses end not alike), but the nature of
his metre is to have three words, at the least, in every verse
which begin with some one letter. As for example the first two
verses of the book run upon 's,' as thus:

'In a somer season whan sette was the sunne
I shope me into shrobbes as I a shepe were.'

The next runneth upon 'h,' as thus:

'In habite as an Hermite unholy of workes.'

This thing being noted, the metre shall be very pleasant to read.
The English is according to the time it was written in, and the
sense somewhat dark, but not so hard but that it may be
understood of such as will not stick to break the shell of the