"Working and wondering as the world asketh,
Some put them to the plough and played them full seldom,
In eareing and sowing laboured full hard."

But some are gluttons and others think only of fine clothes.
Some pray and others jest. There are rogues and knaves here,
friars and priests, barons and burgesses, bakers and butchers,
tailors and tanners, masons and miners, and folk of many other
crafts. Indeed, the field is the world. It lies between a tower
and a dungeon. The tower is God, the dungeon is the dwelling of
the Evil One.

Then, as Langland looked on all this, he saw

"A lady lovely in face, in linnen i-clothed,
Come adown from the cliff and spake me fair,
And said, 'Son, sleepest thou? Seest thou this people
All how busy they be about the maze?'"

Langland was "afeard of her face though she was fair." But the
lovely lady, who is Holy Church, speaks gently to the dreamer.
She tells him that the tower is the dwelling of Truth, who is the
lord of all and who gives to each as he hath need. The dungeon
is the castle of Care.

"Therein liveth a wight that Wrong is called,
The Father of Falseness."

Love alone, said the lady, leads to Heaven,