Before selecting some of Chaucer's religious verses,
however, I must speak of two or three poems by other writers.
The first of these is _The Vision of William concerning Piers
Plowman_,--a poem of great influence in the same direction as the
writings of Wycliffe. It is a vision and an allegory, wherein the vices
of the time, especially those of the clergy, are unsparingly dealt with.
Towards the close it loses itself in a metaphysical allegory concerning
Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.[17] I do not find much poetry in it. There is
more, to my mind, in another poem, written some thirty or forty years
later, the author of which is unknown, perhaps because he was an imitator
of William Langland, the author of the _Vision_. It is called _Pierce the
Plough-man's Crede_. Both are written after the fashion of the
Anglo-Saxon poetry, and not after the fashion of the Anglo-Norman, of
which distinction a little more presently. Its object is to contrast the
life and character of the four orders of friars with those of a simple
Christian. There is considerable humour in the working plan of the poem.
A certain poor man says he has succeeded in learning his A B C, his
Paternoster, and his Ave Mary, but he cannot, do what he will, learn his
Creed. He sets out, therefore, to find some one whose life, according
with his profession, may give him a hope that he will teach him his creed
aright.
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