merit:--

'For her love I cark and cave,
For her love I droop and dare,
For her love my bliss is bare,
And all I wax wan.

'For her love in sleep I slake,[1]
For her love all night I wake,
For her love mourning I make
More than any man.'

[1] 'In sleep I slake:' am deprived of sleep.


And another of a pastoral vein:--

'When the nightingale singes the woods waxen green,
Leaf, grass, and blossom springs in Avril I ween,
And love is to my heart gone, with one spear so keen,
Night and day my blood it drinks, my heart doth me teen.'

About a hundred years after Layamon (in 1280) appeared a poet not
dissimilar to him, named Robert of Gloucester. His surname is unknown, and
so are the particulars of his history. We know only that he was a monk of
Gloucester Abbey, that he lived in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I.,
and that he translated the Legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued
the History of England down to the time of Edward I. This work is wonder-
fully minute, and, generally speaking, accurate in its topography as well
as narrative, and was of service to Selden when he wrote his Notes to