Chapter 5

“He is in the mydde point”: Poetic Deep Structure and the Frameworks of Incarnational Poetics

. . . for he is in the mydde poynt of allthyng and all he doith . . .

—A Revelation, 11.21–22

What, I say, is this word, formable and not yet formed, except something of our own mind which we cast this way and that by a kind of revolving motion, according as we think now of this and now of that thing, just as they are found, or as they occur to our mind?

—De Trinitate, 15.15.25

And whon god wolde · he went his way

And þenne was sprad · þe Flourdelys

—“Flourdelys,” ll. 55–56

FROM THE TOPIC of time within narrative, this chapter moves to the large-scale structural forms that lie at the heart of an Incarnational poetic. When John Capgrave sought “to uttir pleynly in langage of oure nacion, / Swech straunge doutes that long to the Incarnacion,” he wanted to articulate both clearly and fully.¹ When I discussed Capgrave in my introduction, I focused primarily on vernacularity and historical moment, only briefly raising the issue of poetic form, which I wish to consider here more extensively. In an Incarnational poetic, the capacity of language to express fully, making manifest more than it says directly, hinges in part on the kinetic power of interpretative leaps that transcend time-bound constraints of narrative. While a narrative presents itself teleologically from a start to a finish, or at least progresses from first words to last, the potency of a “full word” lies in the off-the-page process by which a reader mulls over the resonance of words or imagistic patterns and ponders referents that point away from local contexts even while signifying within them. This process is a natural part of reading of any sort, of course, but offers special possibilities in an Incarnational context, as I noted earlier with respect to Augustine’s use of the word “word.”² A “full word” relies on concerted attentive thought, processed in and through time, and also on brief flashes of insight, the glimpses of Augustine’s “true word” perceived momentarily “through this mirror and in this enigma,” or as Hilton puts it, the glimmerings of the city of Jerusalem seen from afar as pilgrims travel toward it at night.³ The systemic aspect of a poetic thus resides in relational thought; here, I am interested in a layering of understandings in and through time—a layering that enables an approximation of the ineffable, or as near as language and thought may come to it. For these writers, since God’s understanding is instantaneous and comprehensive while human understanding is timebound and partial, writing and reading instantiate a way of knowing, a process of understanding, a means to an end. Such mediation models, with human language, in poetical forms, the mediation of the Logos (but cannot replicate it). No wonder, then, that an Incarnational poetic may stress Christ’s humanity as not only a way (cf. John 14:6) but also a means, and a mean or middle point.

One formal strategy writers embraced was to treat Christ’s earthly life as both a historical period of time and a sort of shorthand for salvation history, shorthand that simultaneously points backward to the beginning of time (Creation) and forward to the end of time (the eschaton). Such a tactic, perhaps usefully thought of as a meditation on God’s power to transcend time, may be enacted in the structural form of written works by placing a special focus on the Incarnation as initiating the events of Christ’s human life, with the Passion as a pivot that points toward the eschaton. As a good and fundamental beginning, the Incarnation sets in motion the events of Jesus’ life that enable salvation. I noted earlier that fourteenth-century writers meditate on transformations of Christ’s human body in and through time, such as I described in relation to “love deed” and the deictics of salvation in the “Long Charter.”⁴ In their textual histories as well as their themes, the works I have drawn together in this study also exemplify experiential understanding gained over and through (historical or poetic) time: three of them are among the small number of works from the period that show the repeated engagement of one individual rethinking over time (Piers Plowman, A Revelation, The Scale),⁵ while another was worked and reworked in successive versions as it was repeatedly copied and altered by its medieval readers (the “Long Charter”). (Perhaps because of their brevity and relative scarcity, the botanical lyrics bear fewer traces of considered thought over time.) The process of thought, a working through of understanding, is key to the dynamic of an Incarnational poetic.

Before turning to specific examples, in keeping with the multiple registers these works invoke, I offer three concepts adapted to my purpose as ways of thinking about what medieval writers are doing when they instantiate an Incarnational poetic: from philosophy, Augustine’s “formable word,” revolved in and over time to become a “true word”; from literary criticism, John Burrow’s “eddy[ing] back” of sense, a redundancy in alliterative verse; from transformational grammar, “deep structure,” wherein the systemic nature of meaning permeates a whole. All three embrace the concept of tapping into underlying meaning that transcends a single moment or image; they also all recognize cognitive processing’s need for time, over time, to come to a layering of understandings.

“Deep structure” has become something of a meme in academia across a wide range of disciplinary fields, in some cases even being used as a meme that describes the quality of being a meme.⁶ Even though the term has been overused in recent thought, I rely on it because medieval writers, while differing sharply in their implementation of systemic structure, share a presumption of the fundamental truth of an emanative Logos that acts in and through historical and poetical time, and that presumption suffuses their work. Moreover, for an Incarnational poetic, the deepness of deep structure points toward not only systemic unity but also the theological magnitude of and conceptual challenge posed by the union of God and humanity, such as Julian engages when she describes the Incarnational digging of the servant as “seeking the deepness.”⁷ As a unifying whole underlying specific linguistic instances, the concept of “deep structure” is also nearly analogous to the concept of “conceptual metaphor.”

Recall that in De Trinitate, Augustine defines a technical sense of the word “word” in order to generate an analogy that would link human language to the Logos. Augustine’s project of describing how the human mind contains created trinities in the image of the uncreated Trinity ends with projections of thought overlaid through time, the only approximation of the ineffable available, according to Augustine, in this life. The analogy relies on Augustine’s concept of an existing yet formable pre-thought word, revolving over time:

What is that which can be a word, and, therefore, is already worthy of the name of a word? What, I say, is this word, formable and not yet formed, except something of our own mind which we cast this way and that by a kind of revolving motion, according as we think now of this and now of that thing, just as they are found, or as they occur to our mind? And it then becomes a true word when that which we cast, as I have said, by a revolving motion, arrives at that which we know, and is formed by it by taking its perfect likeness, so that as any thing is known, so it is also thought, so it is spoken in the heart, that is, without sound, without the thought of sound, such as certainly belongs to some language. (15.15.25)⁸

The “true word” (“verum verbum”), as Augustine calls it, is a sort of abstract something-before-thought informed by an innate knowledge of God present within the mind, a “word,” that is, informed by the post-Fall remnant of the image of God within human reason.⁹ By a “revolving motion,” the mind imposes form, informed by a true form or divine Truth, on thought. Such “revolving” requires thought, over time, to conform a “word” to “the Word,” the Second Person of the Trinity. In Augustine’s model, such revolving and informing are aspects of interiority, taking place within the mind itself. While such layering is also the strategy of an Incarnational poetic, in the latter the forms are both linguistic and in a larger sense structural, since the written words of literary works must be placed, one after another, on the page to form the whole: words may point backward and forward, but only in memory, in the fullness of time, can the structure be glimpsed all at once.

While such retellings operate as an underlying structure of the poem, they also offer a continuing reevaluation of a conceptual challenge, a series of changes rung over one theme that connects to other recurring themes. This process of working over and back, retaining some constants while altering certain variables, sustains its own fluid dynamic, a sort of ebb and flow that models and remodels the Incarnational moment. Movement within a framework enacts an “eddying back of sense,” where the present retelling of the Incarnation gestures backward to previous retellings and in a directionless way toward a divine reality. I have borrowed the concept of “eddying back” from John Burrow, who used it in a pejorative sense as he sought to explain how alliterative poetry can be unproductively constrained by its own form: “[alliterative poets] seem to rely on the intrinsic interest of the alliterative line and language to hold the audience’s attention, as if, sometimes, the mere display of the words were enough. The sense is continually being forced to eddy back in order to include another synonym.”¹⁰ For Burrow, eddying back is a flawed redundancy of sense intended to generate sound clusters at the expense of simplicity or directness. The constraints of the alliterative line might encourage a listing of places that begin with the letter “g” in order to fill out the meter, for instance, or, to use the example put forward by Burrow: “We are told three times that Youth was a man, twice that he was warlike, twice that he sat on a horse, and once that he intended to ride it,” all in the space of four relatively brief alliterative lines from The Parlement of the Thre Ages.¹¹ Burrow suggests that superabundance, in this case, is not meaningful; in his view, the reiterated concepts appear randomly except with respect to the alliterating sounds.

An Incarnational poetic encourages such eddying back of sense for patterning that adds meaning through repetitions introducing variety. In poems that engage the topos of the leaps of Christ, for example, each leap signals a reaffirmation of that first leap into the womb, a sort of rebirth of commitment, on God’s part, to his plan of salvation—a reinforcing iteration of the flowing forth of his love. Once the pattern of leaps has been established, readers expect fulfillment of the form. The fulfillment is not simply in the repetition of the leaping action, but in the way the events metaphorically represented by the leaps are actions linked by their common (emanative) foundation. Patterns, and their fulfillments, and their alterations, are there to be seen if readers are alert to them. The evocative power and elusive meaning of “true love,” for example, similarly derive from both the fulfillment and the denial or deferment of expectations suggested by generic or topical forms, as I showed in Chapter 2.

In this chapter, I consider poetic deep structure with particular attention to the three image groups I earlier identified as recurring in late medieval English writing: Christ’s body as language or writing, as clothing or enwrapment, and as botanical growth or life force. My discussion is representative rather than exhaustive; other works contemporary to these would profitably be considered in light of such poetic frameworks. Space does not permit me to look in equal depths at all poems, nor can I give the longer works the sustained attention their intricate structures and complex concerns merit; proper treatment of Piers Plowman’s Incarnational poetic would require a book in itself. Nevertheless, as I show, for writers who engage the Incarnation at a structural level in their own writing, isolated metaphor or imagery may be an important means for expressing the mystery of God’s taking on human nature but cannot be the only means: the Incarnation manifests itself repeatedly in their work, sometimes in subtle ways, often in fundamental structures of the poem as a whole. When such Incarnational forms occur together within a work, they may be seen to generate an Incarnational mode; their meaning lies not primarily in the form itself, in the verbal pattern, but in the interpretive leaps inherent to an Incarnational poetic. Such layering works because of intersections between form and expectations aroused by form.

Lordship, Kingship, and the “Long Charter of Christ”

In Chapters 2 and 3, I examined specific aspects of the form of the “Long Charter.” While this poem has generally been treated as an example of Passion poetry,¹² I have been describing it as Incarnational. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, of course, but it is worth considering why I see the Incarnation as paramount in the poem’s system of thought when others have focused on the Passion. How do we know an Incarnational poetic when we come across one, when Incarnation and Crucifixion often are both given considerable attention in the same poem, and indeed the Incarnational imagery appears understated? The answer must lie in poetic form.

As I previously noted, in the A-text of the “Long Charter,” a double Incarnational metaphor of lordship spans the entire poem, twinning two predominant views of Christ’s human flesh: as parchment for his charter (ll. 54, 78–80) and as the cloth of the lord’s côte armure (215–24). The center of the poem pivots on the third Incarnational image group, botanical growth or life force: the “trewe loue,” a plant plenteously growing in nature, is named in the charter as the rent due as well as the means to salvation, to be sought (and found) in Christ’s side (120–30). This botanical imagery further coincides with the cloth-based imagery of lordship at the end of the poem, where Christ’s wounds are transformed into roses in his côte armure (221), this heraldic device being the sign by which humanity is to recognize him as lord. Botanical and clothing imagery is additionally brought together with the charter motif, as Christ says his charter (his body) will be read out loud at the end of time. I discussed all this in Chapters 2 and 3.

Because this poem is not generally well known, a more detailed paraphrase would be useful to tease out how its Incarnational form manifests itself. The poem is presented as an address of Christ (the “I” of the poem), who is hanging on the Cross, to passersby, or collective humanity (“[m] an and womman,” 2), epitomized by the reader/listener (the “you” of the poem). Christ identifies himself as “kyng of heuene and helle” (1) who, for love of humanity, came down from heaven to give his inheritance/land (“erytage,” 11) to homeless wandering humanity, who were previously driven out of “ioye” (5) through the devil’s treason.¹³ To forestall a challenge to the gift, he took seisin (possession of land), being kept “dernely [secretly]” (17) by a virgin for forty weeks less five days in order “to fulfulle þe olde lawes” (20).¹⁴ Envious Satan puts him to the trial with pride, covetousness, and envy because “wel he wiste [knew] I was a man” (31), but finding no sin in him, sends his servants against him “with maystrye [armed force]” (35) to kill him. Yet Christ has in mind to make humanity more secure by confirming his seisin with a deed of gift, “a chartre of feffement” (42). Christ’s description of his own condition for more than thirty years before his deed was done (i.e., his human lifetime on earth) parallels humanity’s wandering and poverty at the opening of the poem. Too poor to afford parchment, he gave his own skin, as love prompted him to do. To obtain friends, as the poor do, he gave a supper. Before he rose from the table, he was betrayed by a friend. He had “a kirtel . . . and cloþes mo” (67), which he had to give up; those who wrote the charter cast lots to see whether one person would get all garments or they should be divided among several.¹⁵ Everyone, friend or foe, deserted him. He was pinned to a pillar, stretched to dry in the sun, as parchment ought to be. Hear and see, Christ says, how the charter was written: Jews spat on his face (the ink); the scourges were the pens, the 5,460 wounds on his body the text. He calls on passersby to read the charter (“O vos omnes,” 96a) and then reads out the text of the charter himself, with the particulars I previously examined in detail, including the rent of the “trewe loue” (126) and the five seals. He notes that he has taken the Crown of Thorns on his head “in token þat I am kyng / and frely may 3yuon my þyng” (153–54). The Jews were witnesses; the sealing took place between two thieves. For his thirst, he requested “a loue drynk” (167), he says, but received “eysel and galle” (168).¹⁶ Additional witnesses were Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, his mother, and many others. Mary did not want to cry before the charter was completed but often said “alas.” He was so poor that he had nothing to give in his will except his mother; he gave her to his “cosyn” [John] (181). With his word “consummatum” (187) he completes the charter, declaring humanity has overcome its foe, Satan, to whom he goes to show the deed. He writes out a covenant with Satan, specifying that he will take his “catel [movable goods]” (195) that Satan falsely stole through “fray [assault, breach of the peace]” (196). He returns to make another feast, known as Easter, lasting forty days. To make the “you” of the poem always “syker [secure, safe, confident]” (206), he leaves an indenture—his flesh and blood in the hand of the priest—and also a token that may be carried about (the cross). He must return to his father, having done his will, and takes along his coat of arms, which he took from humanity’s livery (another passage I examined earlier in detail).¹⁷ It was made for him by a very beautiful maiden. He brought it out of her bower; it is spangled with five roses, the wounds to which he dealt a death blow. When he comes again, you may recognize him by this heraldic device. At that time, when the charter is read, those who have not paid their rent will be very afraid: they will go to hell, those who have paid will return to heaven with him. Pay your rent and claim your inheritance at will.¹⁸

This brief summary brings to the fore several further points about the poem’s form, points that both illuminate the poem’s Incarnational deep structure and provide some clues to the interests, and perhaps background, of the poet who wrote the A-text of the “Long Charter.”¹⁹ On close examination, it is evident that the poet is deeply invested in the sacramental and liturgical aptness of his imagery, that he uses legal terminology and liturgical passages with exceptional care, that he might have known law French, and that later revisers of his poem were not everywhere attuned to the fine points of his phrasings. His attention to form belies the usual critical dismissal of this poem’s aesthetics as being of interest only for the charter metaphor.

First, beyond the twinning of charter and côte armure, several parallel structures are in play. Perhaps the most obvious of these is the pairing of the Last Supper and Easter, a pairing the poet derives from the liturgy for Holy Week and emphasizes by treating each event at considerable length in about the same number of lines at roughly similar distances from the beginning (fifty-five lines in) and the end of the poem (thirty lines back):²⁰

To gete me frendes I 3af god mede	meed
So doþ þe pore þat haþ gret nede
Vn a thoresday a soper21 y made
Boþe frend and fo to maky glade
Wiþ mete and drynk to soule fode
Wiþ holy word my flesch and blode
This I made for mankynde
Mi loue dedis to haue in mynde
Hoc facite in meam commemoracionem	Do this in memory of me22
A-gayn y com and made a feste	feast
Among þe leste and þe meste	least; most
Aparty þo men gonne knowe me	openly
That I was man of gret pouste	power
That feste lesteþ fourty dawes
To do men knowe my newe lawes
That feste was of ioye and blis
That esterday 3et y-cleped ys	Easter day; called
On endenture I lafte with þe	indenture; left
That euere þou sholdest syker be	safe/secure
In prestes hond my flesch and blod
That for þe dyed vp-on þe rod	cross

For a poem that so tenaciously imagines and re-imagines transformations of Christ’s body, it is perhaps not surprising to find such attention to Christ’s institution of the eucharistic celebration at the Last Supper. The poet makes a point of mentioning the day of the week—here not so much a historical reference as a liturgical one (Holy Thursday commemorates the establishment of the sacrament). He lingers over the doctrinal point that Christ’s body is “mete and drynk” (59) yet human “flesch and blode” (60), a correspondence reinforced by the reiterated “wiþ” (59, 60) that draws attention to Christ’s action in establishing the sacrament and underlines the importance of the point. This celebratory meal (“to maky glade”) is of “soule fode.”²³ By including the words of the consecration in Latin (62a), the poet not only situates the moment in historical time (the Last Supper) but also points toward the timelessness of its power (every mass, everywhere, at all times), much as we saw him do with “love deed.” In fact, he also reiterates “love deed” here (62, this time in the plural), subtly reinforcing the charter imagery even as he highlights the eucharistic message. “This I made for mankynde” (61) emphasizes Christ’s agency in establishing the sacrament: “this” is the sacrament, “this” is his body broken, “this” is the “love deed”; “do this in memory of me.”²⁴ Yet the charter motif adds further complexity. In Cooling Castle’s charter poem, as I showed, “Thys is chartre and wytnessyng” pointed to the material reality of the castle itself.²⁵ Here, too, “This I made for mankynde / Mi loue dedis to haue in mynde / Hoc facite in meam commemoracionem” points to material reality: Christ’s body in the Eucharist, of course, and also as the parchment on which “loue dedis” are inscribed, which Christ has invited the reader/viewer to read precisely to keep his “love deed” in mind. Remembering, in fact, is a condition of the gift (“To haue & to holden withouten mysse / In a condicioun 3if þou be kynde / And my loue dedes haue in mynde,” 112–14), a condition Christ restates at the end of the poem (226), together with the other condition (pay the rent of “trewe loue”):

Tho þat ben of rente be-hynde
An þuse dedes haue no3t in mynde
Sore may þeyer ben a-drad	afraid
Whan þis chartre shal ben rad. (225–28)	read

Elsewhere in the poem, the poet postulates thought as the first step to action: he depicts Satan plotting against Christ (“harde he þratte [menaced] me in his þou3t / That sesyng sholde ben dere a-bou3t / he sente his seruant3 with maystrye . . . ,” 33–35), and Christ already having a response planned:

Wel he fond hym geyned no3t

A-nother help was in my pou3t

More syker þe to make

Ageyn þi fo ful of wrake

Heuene and erthe in present

To make a chartre of feffement (emphasis added)

Christ’s command to remember his “loue dedis” offers a first step toward “trewe loue”; the communal commemoration of the mass offers a means for putting that charity into practice.

Like the imagery of the charter and côte armure, the passage on the Easter feast, coming near the end of the poem, reinforces Jesus’ status as a lord who wields power (“Aparty þo men gonne knowe me / That I was man of gret pouste,” 199–200). It further testifies to his kingship by highlighting his legislative power (“To do men knowe my newe lawes,” 202). The poet initially relies on the reader’s knowledge of scripture to link this line back to the rent of “trewe loue”: what are the new laws, we might wonder? A moment’s thought suggests the New Testament’s love command: love God, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:37–39). Then, intriguingly, the passage links back to the Last Supper passage not just eucharistically but via the charter metaphor: the communion wafer, elevated at the moment of consecration, recalls Christ’s “love deed” in more than one sense here, since Christ identifies it not as bread but as an indenture, the grantee’s copy of the deed of gift. The structural placement of this indenture within the narrative richly extends the connections the poet has established among the breaking of bread at the Last Supper, Christ’s flesh and blood in eucharistic celebration, and the sacrament’s infinite replicability that joins its participants in charity. “In prestes hond my flesch and blod” (207), the indenture recalls the words of consecration spoken toward the beginning of the poem, again linking the moment when Christ instituted the sacrament, an historic moment in time and in the early life of the church, with any and all celebrations of the sacrament itself—any day, any hour, any place.²⁶

The complexity of the poet’s thought comes across in other subtle formal ways. He pairs “þe olde lawes” (20) that are satisfied by his possession of humanity/gestation in the womb, for example, with “my newe lawes” (202) that the Easter feast makes known—the New Testament covenant of love that replaces the Old Testament covenant of law and, as the charter conceit shows, carries the force of law. He seems to draw on the same imagistic tradition the Ancrene Wisse and Piers Plowman do in thinking about the Old Testament as sealed letters and the New Testament as letters patent (unsealed new legislation promulgated by a king): at Easter, Christ presides in person over the feast that lasts forty days “To do men knowe my newe lawes” (202), a tangible broadside, if you will, to be read by all, the text of the charter still visible on the parchment of his skin.²⁷ Like the pairing of the Last Supper and Easter, the old laws and the new appear at roughly similar distances from the beginning and ending of the text, twenty lines in and thirty-two lines back.

Not all pairings in the poem offer such a framing effect. The poem’s first image of poverty, humanity expelled from Eden, is presented with animal imagery: “Pore þou were dryuon a-way / as a best þat goþ on stray” (7–8). After the Last Supper, Christ describes his betrayal as an attack by a lion: “He [Judas] fond me goyng in þe way / As þe lyon goþ tyl his pray / Susceperunt me sicut leo paratus ad predam” (65–66a, Ps. 16:12). While Christ’s act of traveling is portrayed as more purposeful than humanity’s errant wandering, the two passages are linked by more than just the animal imagery. The poet contrasts humanity’s poverty with Jesus’ kingship, announced in the first line (“Ihesu kyng of heuene and helle”) and again immediately following the expulsion from paradise, when Christ descends “ffro my rych” (9) in response to humanity’s plight. Jesus increasingly takes on that poverty, only to reverse it through his gift of a share of his inheritance.²⁸

Although the verse form of the “Long Charter,” with its short lines, may tempt us at times to read quickly, passing over potential complexities, the poem relies on our bringing to it an understanding of its devotional and liturgical resonances, just as it relies on our knowing something about diplomatics. Yet the poem’s main appeal is not to affect, nor to pain, nor blood, nor passion. Read imagistically, the charter metaphor draws attention to the Passion, to be sure. Read formalistically, the Incarnational framework prompts a closer look at the poem’s entire system of imagery. The opening and closing of the poem focus strongly on Christ’s humanity, as received from Mary: “To a mayde I demytted me” (15); “I ne hadde wher to take / My testament wherof to make / But of [except from] my moder lef and dere” 177–79) and “A cote armure I bar wiþ me / ffor þat I tok of þy leuere / . . . / A wel fayre mayde to me it wro3t” (215–19). The poet never loses sight of Christ’s body, through its transformations and replications. Each new vision is integrally linked in through the developing metaphors of côte armure and charter. The images operate on a physical level (skin to parchment to bread to cloth that is actually skin) and a legal level (“sesyng” to charter to indenture to badge of office), always centering on Christ’s flesh, circling through manifestations of the deed of gift. Twinned views of Christ’s skin as parchment and cloth form the poem’s skeleton, intersecting at two moments in historical time, the Crucifixion and Last Judgment, as well as at moments in poetic time, the middle and end of the poem itself. More than an extended treatment of a memorable visual image, the “Long Charter” demonstrates the poet’s interest in theological ramifications of the Incarnation (the seals as Trinity and hypostatic union) and in aesthetic possibilities of interweaving Latin scripture with a vernacular narrative (melted sealing wax paired with “factum est cor meum”), in inheritance as well as land tenure, in obligations of lordship as well as the signs by which obligations are publicly acknowledged, and in the intersections between two strongly developed metaphors. In the “Long Charter,” all such interests are embedded within a structural underpinning characteristic of an Incarnational poetic, revolving in this case around transformations of Christ’s physical body. The poet demonstrates his intellectual appreciation of how the pieces fit together: passion, and Eucharist, and liturgy, and charity in relation to kingship, lordship, and emanation.

By contrast, we might usefully consider the lyric F. J. Furnivall prints in his compilation of poems from the Vernon manuscript as “A lytel tretys of Loue. Of godes passyon.” This poem is framed around an initial complaint similar to that of the “Long Charter”:

Ihesu Crist, þat is so fre,	noble
To Monnes soule spekeþ he:
“Ichaue,” he seiþ, “I-weddet þe,	married
And in my honden I-writen þe.
“Al þat in þis world is ou3t,	anything [i.e., exists]
ffor þi loue I-chaue hit wrou3t;	I have
And siþen after so deore þe bou3t	then; dearly
Þat of my lyf ne rou3te I nou3t.	cared
“What miht I more don þen þis:
Þen comen out of my ffader blis
And suffren mony a schome, I-wis,	shower of blows; indeed
ffor to bringe þe to blis?
“Þritti wynter on eorþe I 3ode . . .” (1 – 13)29	thirty; went

Here the bridal imagery derived from the Song of Songs predominates. The focus on Incarnation is notably absent, as are liturgical and imagistic complexities of the sort I have been tracing. That lack is especially apparent in passages that share some imagery with the “Long Charter.” For instance, the “Long Charter” poet’s masterful meditation on “trewe loue” derives from, but goes well beyond, the tradition of lover-knight complaints such as the one voiced in “A lytel tretys”:

Loke what wolt þou 3elde me	give
ffor al þat Ichaue don for þe!
Non oþer þing kep I of þe	only
But onliche þat þou loue me. (65–68)

The “Long Charter” is especially noteworthy, then, in part because one of the tropes is a literary imitation of a legal document, generating the expectation that formulaic features of that type of document will reappear in the imitation. More intriguingly, however, the poem merits close attention because of its Incarnational deep structure. The poem’s twinned metaphors of lordship make meaning from our expectations of a particular documentary form (the charter) and literary form (lyric with elements from romance and geste) in a relatively brief narrative, yet offer meditative potential beyond the confines of the story told here.

The scope of the “Long Charter” makes a close reading of the sort I have just offered manageable. I turn now to Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, which is a much longer work, written in prose. It begins as an instructional manual for contemplation, written, Hilton says, for an anchoress who is just beginning in her life as a professed religious. Book 2, written some time later than Book 1, continues in a different vein stylistically, written seemingly for a broader audience of professed religious and laity; by Scale 2, Hilton has expanded his notion of what contemplation is and how it may achieve its ends. Formalistically, in many respects the Scale is far removed from a lyric such as the “Long Charter.” The Scale is not primarily narrative, for one thing, though portions of it make significant use of narrative and its strategies. Yet there are some continuities as well, beyond the interest both works share in the Incarnation, and I find it particularly helpful in this instance to approach the Scale having thought about how form can work in lyric, a topic I shall take up again later in this chapter.

Seeking the “hid God”: The Silk of Scripture in The Scale of Perfection

In an essay on religious lyric, Christiania Whitehead groups lyrics roughly under three headings according to the predominant response they seek to elicit; as she puts it in recapitulating the structure of her essay, “We need to see. We need to identify with what we see. And, thirdly, we need to remember.”³⁰ A moment’s reflection reveals that the “Long Charter” encourages all three of these actions, even as steps taken in that order. Indeed, there is a symbiotic quality to “vision, identification, and memory” (116) that encourages a flow from one to another, a flow being explored increasingly today with the affective turn in medieval literary criticism. In some lyrics, such introspection is served by iteration of a refrain in shifting contexts, or by ever more particularized “fractur[ing],” as Whitehead calls it (103), of an image or metaphor. The “Long Charter” could be perceived this way, as an investigation of Christ’s humanity via an increasingly precise parceling-out of the charter metaphor. Yet, as I have been suggesting, an Incarnational poetic provides a more thoroughgoing, systemic foundation than that. By that I do not mean a uniform or didactic program; on the contrary, these works tend rather toward a working through of a mode of understanding, where the ways in which metaphors and imagistic elements of thought experiments interact and signify with respect to one another can illuminate shifts in a poet’s thought, or different attempts at groping toward one understanding. Moreover, an Incarnational poetic can usefully appeal to affect as well as to intellect. If we look only at a striking image in isolation—the Eucharist as indenture, the servant in Adam’s kirtle, Christ crucified on the lily tree—we risk missing the background that gives context to the salient feature. Hilton’s Scale offers an interesting example, particularly in Scale 1, where, as is commonly noted, the imagery often indeed appears to be isolated rather than systemic. The Scale’s elaborate though understated constructedness situates Hilton as one of the more intriguing of late medieval English prose stylists, one moreover whose vernacular translations of scripture so define his argument that his techniques merit study for structural intricacy alone. His use of and engagement with scripture distinguish his voice from his contemporaries, and it is in his understanding of scripture’s exemplary utility and evocative poetics that Hilton locates the Incarnation as central to his project.³¹

At the beginning of Scale 1, Hilton addresses his treatise to the anchoress, evidently newly come to the contemplative life, explaining that his purpose is to help her in her contemplation.³² His main focus is the anchoress’s imperative to reshape the image of sin within her soul to its original form as the image of God; he uses the word “conversion” to signify the turning from either active life or lower contemplation to higher contemplation, the proper realm for someone of her vowed status. To illustrate his points, in both books he subtly adjusts scripturally based images, such as a coin, “lighti merkenesse,” and the city of Jerusalem, to portray the unchanging but imperfectly seen God who must continually be sought. In the process, he manipulates language of revelation and hiddenness to approximate the process of contemplation itself, generating images, which he feels can only be similitudes of higher reality, that explain how the contemplative should seek to be remade—reformed—in the image of God—God’s form— by means of God’s incarnate Word. His English renderings of Latin scripture subtly contextualize and reshape the quoted texts, making translation less a matter of rendering the sense than of “coming across” from one place to another. His translations become a form of conversion, reforming the text as they seek to reform the self that internalizes that text. In Scale 2, Hilton ultimately arrives at the precise yet abstract vision of Jesus, the Word made flesh, hidden and wrapped in the soft silk of scripture.

Hilton begins with a practical imperative based on form—both true and feigned—and the reshaping of form:

For wite [know] thu weel, a bodili turnynge to God without the herte folwynge is but a figure or a likenes of vertues and no soothfastnesse [reality]. Wherfore a wrecchid man or a woman is he or sche that leveth [neglects] al the inward kepinge of hymself and schapith hym withoute oonli a fourme and likenes of hoolynesse, as in habite and in speche and in bodili werkes . . . . Do thou not so, but turne thyne herte with thy body principali to God, and schape thee withinne to his likenesse bi mekenesse and charité and othere goostli vertues, and thanne art thou truli turned to hym. (1.1.8–16)

From the very beginning of Scale 1, Hilton signals that the process of reforming will be bound up with the soul’s ability to distinguish between appearance and truth. He does so in terms that raise questions about language’s capacity to convey meaning. As Nicholas Watson has pointed out, Hilton carefully avoids the word “image” here, a word whose semantic range in Middle English includes a concrete sense of a wrought object, such as an idol.³³ “Figure,” “likenes,” and “fourme” point to language’s capacity to mean something other than it says directly, or to signal a higher reality. It is to this aspect of language that Hilton turns late in Scale 2 when he describes Christ’s humanity as a shadow, an idea to which I shall return. The distinction Hilton initially draws between falsity and reality in this opening chapter becomes important later in Scale 1 for Hilton’s Augustinian explanation of how men and women, made in the image of God, have become unlike God through sin. They retain within the mind in the faculty of “resoun” the true image, but not the likeness, of God, because the true image is obscured by foul blots of sin which must be chipped away, the subject of much of the remainder of Scale 1. Like Augustine in De Trinitate, Hilton begins by way of a concept that seems confined to his local purpose, but that later can be seen to resonate with his larger concerns.

In chapter nine of Scale 1, Hilton introduces the contrasting registers of darkness and illumination that recur throughout the Scale as a way to visualize both contemplation itself and the limits of human ability fully to comprehend God in this life.³⁴ In this passage, the partial sight available to the contemplative is both a light and a darkness, a case of the glass being simultaneously part empty and part full:

For this [contemplation] is verili a taastynge, and as it were a sight of heveneli joye, not cleerli, but half in derkenesse, which schal be fulfillid and opynli clerid in the blisse of hevene, as Seynt Poul seith: Videmus nunc per speculum in enigmate; tunc autem videbimus facie ad faciem (1 Cor. 13:12). We seen now God bi a myrour, as it were in deerkenesse, but in hevene we schulen see openli face to face. This [contemplation] is the illuminacion of undirstondynge in delites of lovynge, as David seith in the sautier: Et nox mea illuminacio mea in deliciis meis (Psalms 138:11). Mi nyght is my light in my delitees. (1.9.166–73)

Hilton begins with bodily experience (taste, sight) as he aims to describe a spiritual sensation. He shifts from the pleasurable yet ephemeral “tasting” of heavenly joy to an equally transitory half-dark (implying half-light) experience of sight. As Scale 1 continues, Hilton draws sometimes on imagery of light and sometimes of darkness. By offering both together here, he primes us to pair them, so that when one is salient, the other is closely available: “illumination” reminds us that a darkness exists, and “darkness” reminds us that full illumination has been promised, not in this life but in the next. Inherent to the combination of the two is progress over time: contemplation as a way toward the final goal of complete revelation in heaven. The delicious paradox of “Mi nyght is my light” only resonates as potentially pleasurable insofar as the speaker is progressing toward total illumination.³⁵

This progression recurs throughout the Scale as the effort to reclaim a pre-Fall likeness to God, and is characterized most frequently as an ardent search for Jesus, hidden within the soul. In Scale 1, the prime exemplum is the parable of the woman who has lost a drachma (coin) in her house. In this case the scriptural texts are linked associatively by the image of a lantern. As Hilton translates Latin into English, he adjusts the sense to privilege the context he needs. This is a common exegetical technique, yet Hilton’s anchoress is either completely unable to read Latin or cannot read it well, as he suggests elsewhere.³⁶ Why, then, give the Latin at all? He does not seem to do so to assert clerkly auctoritas. Instead, Latin seems integral to his thought process, a sort of touchstone for vernacular expansion, much as it is for Langland, and perhaps for the “Long Charter” poet.³⁷ In the following passage, Hilton makes use of the common exegetical strategy of glossing scriptural passages for his local purpose, thereby linking discrete scriptural moments. Here Hilton’s focus comes to be scripture itself, even though the local topic of the passage is the illumination that may follow contemplation:

This dragme is Jhesu, whiche thou hast lost; yif thou wilt fynde hym, light up a lanterne, whiche is Goddis word, as David seith: Lucerna pedibus meis verbum tuum (Psalms 118:105). Lord, thi word to my feet is a lanterne. Bi this lanterne schalt thou see where he is, and hou thou schalt fynde hym; and yif thu wilt, thou mai with this light opyn anothir lanterne, that is the resoun of thi soule, for oure Lord seith: Lucerna corporis tui est oculus tuus (Matt. 6:22). The lanterne of thi bodi is thi bodili iye. Right so it mai be seid that the lanterne of thi soule is resoun, bi the whiche the soule mai see alle gosteli thinges. Bi this lanterne mai thou fynde Jhesu, and that is soth yif thou holde the lanterne up fro undirnethe the busschel, as oure Lord seith: Nemo accendit lucernam et ponit eam sub modio, sed super candelabrum (Matt. 5:15). There is no man that lighteth a lanterne for to sette it undir a busschel, but upon a candelstike; that is to seie, thi reson schal not be overleid with worldli bisinesse, ne veyn thoughtes and fleisschli affecciones. . . . (1.48.1391–1403)

Illumination proceeds through time: God’s word illuminates darkness, revealing the hidden Jesus. Unlike “my night is my delight,” in this part of the exemplum, darkness is not profitable or desirable; the emphasis here is entirely on the soul’s capacity for enlightened progression. In the Psalms quotation, “Goddis word” does not signify Jesus, the word of God; in the exemplum, Jesus is the drachma. Instead, following Gregory’s Moralia, Hilton glosses the lantern as scripture, and this first lantern fires a second lantern, reason, which when brought out from under the bushel basket of worldly cares may be held high to make an effective search.³⁸ This chain of imagery would have worked without any Latin, of course, as a little exemplum of how to meditate. By retaining the Latin, however, Hilton emphasizes the importance of the word of God, scripture, because either we read the quotations twice (if we know Latin), perhaps comparing the English translation to see where it diverges from the sense, or, if we cannot read Latin, we skip over it, taking these lines as rubrics that highlight the importance of the vernacular translation that follows. At the same time, Hilton himself models the very sort of contemplative meditation on scripture he advocates. In concluding his exegesis of the parable, Hilton explains the manner in which Jesus will be revealed to the ardent soul. Surprisingly, he treats shadow and glimmering as if they are interchangeable:

And yif thou fynde as I have seide, that is, yif thou may in cleernesse and clennesse of conscience fele the hoomli and the peesful presence of Jhesu Crist mercifulli schewande hym to the face of thi soule as a schadewe or a glymerynge, thou mai, yif thou wolt, calle thi frendes to thee for to make mirthe with the, for thou hast founden thi dragme Jhesu. (1.48.1416–20)

A shadow is not normally a glimmering, nor vice versa, yet here they are classed together. Both resonate with images he has used before: “mercifulli schewande hym to the face of thi soule as a schadewe” recalls “We seen now God bi a myrour, as it were in deerkenesse, but in hevene we schulen see openli face to face” by the association of shadow with darkness and the face of the soul with the face to face encounter in heaven. The glymerynge both reinforces the image by negation of the light which is not hidden under the bushel basket, whose slats allow only the narrowest of rays to escape, and reiterates the promise of full illumination to come. Unlike the lantern, which in Hilton’s thought suggests a binary “lit” or “unlit” space, both shadow and glimmering are intense moments of partial lightness, partial darkness, but with the emphasis on dark versus light switched, and, as in chapter nine, both perspectives are offered. The moment of revelation is not a movement or progress but a point of stasis: when you see the shadow or glimmering, then you have found your drachma. While the lantern evokes movement through contemplation toward a goal, this moment of recognition signals a point of rest. Although Hilton does not make a point of it here, he is aware of the exegetical tradition of glossing Christ’s humanity as a shadow. Seeking Jesus within the soul, the anchoress may find a shadow of him, his humanity offering a glimpse of his divinity.³⁹

In Scale 2, Hilton once again takes up the question of how a contemplative might proceed, this time centering his imagery around a second parable, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where Jerusalem signifies contemplative union with God. Hilton’s handling of abstract concepts in Scale 2 is deft and complex, and the Incarnational underpinnings of his work—present, but muted, in Scale 1— gradually become more salient.⁴⁰ By the middle of chapter twenty-four, Hilton has already established us on the road, following Jesus, who is a light and a guide but at the same time unseeable and hidden. Here Hilton’s English glosses are especially noticeable:

Biholde him wel, he goth bifore thee, not in bodili liknesse, but unseabli bi privei hid presence of his goostli myght; therfore see hym gostly yif thou myght . . . for hee schal leede thee in the righte weie to Jerusalem, that is, the sight of pees in contemplacioun. Thus praiede the prophete to the Fadir of hevene, seiynge thus: Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem tuam ipsa me deduxerunt, et adduxerunt in montem sanctum tuum, et in tabernacula tua (Psalms 42:3). That is: Fader of hevene, sende oute thi light and thi soothfastenesse, that is, thi sone Jhesu; and he schal lede me bi desire in me into thi hooli hille and into thi tabernaculis, that is, to the feelynge of perfighte love and heighte in contemplacioun. (2.24.1341–50)

Earlier, in “Mi nyght is my light in my delitees,” the darkness was a lack of understanding to be dispelled by illuminating contemplation through love. Here in chapter twenty-four the night is a profitable redirection of one’s affection from worldly things to the light of the true day, Jesus. Progress through contemplation toward revelation is still the ultimate tenor of this word “nyght” but the local tenor has shifted slightly though the vehicle has remained the same:

. . . this is a good nyght and a lighti merkenesse, for it is a stoppynge ought of fals love of the world, and it is a neighynge to the trewe dai. And sotheli the merkere that the nyght is, the nerrere is the trewe light of the love of Jhesu . . . . Thus semede that the prophete menede whanne he seide thus: Cum in tenebris sedeo, dominus mea lux est (Micah 7:8). Whanne I sitte in myrkenesse oure Lorde is my light; that is, whanne my soule is hid from alle stirynges of synne as it were in sleep, thanne is oure Lord Jhesu my light, for thanne neigheth he of his grace for to schewe me of his light. (2.24.1393–1402)

As with “my night is my light,” here Hilton draws on a paradox, or perhaps a restatement of the same paradox on different ground: a “lighti merkeness,” and “the merkere . . . the nyght, the nerrere . . . the trewe light.” It is a murkiness in which it is profitable to sit, at least for a while. As is commonly noted, however, Hilton’s system of imagery is not entirely consistent with his strategies from Scale 1: while previously he indicated that we ought to move from night to light, here we find that further, deeper murkiness is desirable to enable progress, and the power of murkiness continues in the next chapter, where pilgrims on the road approach the city by night: “thanne neigheste thou faste to Jerusalem. Thou art not yit at it, but bi smale sodeyn lightnynges that gliteren oute thorugh smale cranés fro the cité schalt thou mowen see it from feer, or thou come therto” (2.25.1491–93).

Small rays of distant light, evidence of a destination not yet reached, recall that earlier glimmer, “the hoomli and the peesful presence of Jhesu Crist mercifulli schewande hym to the face of thi soule as a schadewe or a glymerynge” in Scale 1. It is surely no accident that each of these two important parables holds out the tantalizing hope of the glimmer or glitter of a partially concealed beacon, the fruit of the higher part of contemplation. According to Hilton, the glimmer results from beholding Jesus as God and man together, the Word veiled in flesh, elsewhere called “a hid God,” rather than in his suffering manhood only, the focal point of Passion devotion and the like. The glimmer is nearly a way to move beyond the veil of flesh: nearly, but not quite. The shadow, earlier linked only syntactically with the glimmering, comes back, in a passage I shall examine shortly, as a spiritual shadow with a body equivalent to the bodily veil of flesh. Hilton finally spells out that behind the conjunction of light and shadow I have been tracing lies the hypostatic union itself, the ultimate yoking of like and unlike that re-forms humanity to the true image of God, an image that can only be glimpsed in this life, occasionally, through the work of contemplation.

Since Hilton frequently joins his thoughts by quoting and then interpolating, the figural links I have been pointing out tend to efface themselves as simply part of the fabric. Quite a lot else gets said between “mi nyght is my lyght” and “the merkere the nyght.” When his wording does recall an earlier passage, Hilton often does not retain a one-to-one correspondence in the local tenor of his metaphors, as in the case of “night.” When we read Hilton quickly, we may get the impression that by moving rapidly through quoted texts he drops each figure after its local purpose is served. However, Hilton’s general tactic seems to be to choose figures that revive earlier figures, setting old and new meanings side by side in recollection. As a result, while we may sometimes sense a disjuncture in his figurative language, the glimmer of the global tenor of Hilton’s metaphors continually draws us forward.

To turn briefly to the other issue I initially raised, that of Hilton’s understanding of form, re-forming, and language, Hilton begins with form as a reshaping of the image within, a conversion to contemplation. In the drachma exemplum, Jesus is hidden within the soul, to be sought by meditation and the chipping away of the image of sin. Scale 2 contrasts this reforming in faith, as Hilton calls it, with the more difficult reforming in feeling, the work of higher contemplation. In lower contemplation, as Hilton describes it, a bodily understanding of spiritual concepts forces comprehension through the imagination, the image-processing portion of the mind. This Bernardine recognition of the bodiliness of sensory perception leads to his explanation of the hypostatic union as a shadow cast by light:

oure Lord Jhesu tempereth his unseable light of his godhede, and clothid it undir bodili liknesse of his manhede, and scheweth it to the innere iye of the soule. . . . And this is the schadwynge of oure Lord Jhesu overe a chosen soule. . . . right as a schadwe is maad of a light and a bodi, right so this goostli schadwe is maad of the blissid unseable light of the godhede, and of the manhede ooned therto, and is schewed to a devoute soule. (2.30.2022–30)

The hypostatic union thus has a visible body, the shadow, or Christ’s manhood, and an unseeable light, Christ’s godhood, which casts the visible shadow by means of (unseeable) illumination.⁴¹ In his use of glimmer earlier and shadow here, Hilton associatively links the soul’s desire to see Jesus to his earlier parable of the drachma, via the glinting and glimmering of a coin in the dark. “Shadow” also subtly links back to the very opening of Scale 1, where scripture study informed by reason only is “but a figure and a schadewe of verry contemplacioun” (1.4.64), a pale imitation.⁴²

In the following passage, the tenor of hiddenness has shifted, much as I noted with night, earlier. Here “within” and hiddenness take on erotic qualities: the worldly prostitution of the soul that is “withoute” at the beginning of the example makes the contrasting (and scriptural) “privité” stand out as all the more exclusive and desirable:⁴³

Al withoute is a soule while it is overleid and blynded with wordli love; it is as comone as the highwai. For eche a stirynge that cometh of the flesch or of the feende synketh in, and gooth thorugh it. But thanne thorugh grace is it withdrawen into privei chambre . . . Of this speketh the prophete thus: Secretum meum michi; secretum meum michi (Isa. 24:16). Mi priveté to me, my pryvyté to me. That is, the lovere of Jhesu, thorugh inspiracion of his grace taken up from outeward feelynge of wordli love and ravyssched into priveté of goostli love, yeeldeth thankynges and seiyinge to hym thus: Mi pryveté to me. That is, my Lord Jhesu in priveté is schewed to me and pryveli hid fro all the loveres of the world, for it is called hid manna . . . . And that oure Lord Jhesu bihotith to his lovere this: Dabo sibi manna absconditum, quod nemo novit, nisi qui accipit (Rev. 2:17). That is, I schal geven manna hid that no man knowith but he that taketh it. (2.40.2957–69)

Hiddenness begins to mean exclusivity, the mutual bond between lovers, private and uncommon. Reforming in understanding thus necessitates perception on a conceptual rather than a sensory level. The priveté of hid manna may be found only in the absence of sensory perception, despite the bodiliness of both the eroticism and the eating metaphor.⁴⁴ So it is reforming in understanding that illuminates the hid God, and here at last the incarnate Word is revealed as hidden within scripture:

grace . . . stireth the soule for to seen and feelen Jhesu in othir maner. And that manere is first for to see Jhesu in Hooli Writte; for Jhesu, that is al sothfastnesse, is hid and helid [clothed, wrapped, sheltered] therinne, wounden in a soft sendeel [silk] undir faire wordis . . . and bi a litil heldynge [pouring] of his wisdom into a clene soule he maketh the soule wise ynowgh for to undirstonde alle Hooli Writte—not alle at ones in special biholdynge, but thorugh that grace the soule receyveth a newe ablenesse, and a gracious abite [disposition] for to undirstonde it speciali whanne it cometh to mynde. (2.43.3278–97)

Divine truth must be grasped in full, not reasoned or seen. Hilton describes an experience that is not so much visionary—not all at once in special beholding— as it is revelatory—a new ableness to understand when scripture comes to mind. When you see the shadow or the glimmering, then you have found your drachma. Moreover, Jesus is not only hidden in scripture, he is swaddled in it—clothed, wrapped, sheltered, embraced. As earlier the half-dark suggested half-light, in his tactile emphasis on the soft, smooth, precious enwrapment of silk, Hilton subtly invites the thought of unwrapping—a process in time. Revelation, as he describes it, does not come all in a rush, fleetingly. The comfort of being wrapped in silk is as intimate as the comfort of a habit, a disposition, a long-held custom, a way one comes to by repeated use over time. In more than one sense, scripture is essential to Hilton’s concept of reforming in understanding, as it is not for Julian or the Cloud-author, or even for Augustine.

I began my discussion of Hilton with form, likeness, and the conversion to contemplative life; I am closing it with hiddenness that necessitates inspirational understanding. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Hilton recommends meditation both on the words of scripture and on the writings of the Church fathers. Although humility would surely preclude him from putting his Scale on the same footing, Hilton’s use of figures suggests that he may leave interrelationships only half-explained deliberately, despite the overall didactic tone and purpose of the Scale, so that the process of reading and thinking about imagery in the Scale resembles contemplative progress itself, a gradual movement from unlikeness to likeness, from unknowing to comprehension insofar as comprehension is possible in this life.

Such an emphasis on the process of working is perhaps more naturally a part of a manual for contemplatives than we might expect it to be for lyric. Yet a similar focus on work often seems natural for lyric poems, which offer a way into a mode of thought or working. Such poems require a certain engagement from their readers not unlike the active work of contemplation Hilton outlines. I next wish to consider three lyrics with botanical subject matter, poems that draw on the topos of the leaps of Christ and also the Truelove tradition. As with the “Long Charter,” these are relatively brief. Structure, and in two cases refrain, is key to their effect.

Vitality, Church, Salvation: Springing and Sprouting in Some Botanical Lyrics

Thomas Hill has remarked on how closely the events in “Mary, the Rose-Bush,” a fifteenth-century carol previously thought to describe the Five Joys of Mary, parallel the leaps of Christ.⁴⁵ Here the leaping action is entirely transformed into botanical springing of the rosebush’s branches. The structure is fairly straightforward, the springings offered seriatim, like the homilists’ listings, and the series is designated quite clearly as a pattern (the first . . . the second . . . ). The poet treats the leaps as not only botanical but also vertical and spatial, much as Ambrose did in “Veni redemptor gentium.”⁴⁶ As the poem progresses, the poet stresses the spatial element more and more strongly (“spryng and spred,” 19; “sprong to hell,” 23; “sprong to hevyn,” 28):

Of a rose, a louely rose,
Of a rose I syng a song.
Lyth and lystyn, both old and yyng,	attend; listen;young
How the rose begane to spryng;
A fayyrer rose to owr lekyng	liking
Sprong ther neuer in kynges lond.
v branchis of that rose ther ben,	five
The wyche ben both feyer and chene;	which; fair; beautiful
Of a maydyn, Mary, hevyn quene,
Ovght of hyr bosum the branch sprong.	out
The [first] branch was of gret honour:
That blyssed Mary shuld ber the flour,
Ther cam an angel ovght hevyn toure	outfrom
To breke the develes bond.
The secund branch was gret of myght,
That sprong vpon Cristmes nyght;
The sterre shone and lemeghd bryght
That man schuld se it both day and nyght.
The third branch gan spryng and spred;
iii kynges than to branch gan led
Tho to Owr Lady in hure chyldbed;
Into Bethlem that branch sprong ryght.
The fourth branch, it sprong to hell,
The deueles powr for to fell,
That no sovle therin shuld dwell,
The brannch so blessedfully sprong.
The fifth branch, it was so swote,	gracious
Yt sprong to hevyn, both croppe and rote,	the entire plant
In euery ball to ben owr bott	woe; salvation
So blessedly yt sprong.11

In this case, four of the five springings can be explained by reference to the leaps: the Annunciation, Nativity, Visit of the Magi, Harrowing of Hell, and Ascension. The odd one out of this list, compared to common enumerations of the leaps, is the coming of the magi (stanza five).⁴⁸ We have already seen the magi linked to the leaps, though there the visit is not itself a leap: Imaginatif’s description of love’s leap, in Piers Plowman. There the association with clerkly learning transforms the biblical shepherds and magi into the clerks and parish priests of late medieval England, responsible for propagation of the faith by educating the laity. A similar idea might be implied by the phrase “spryng and spred” here in “Rose-Bush,” where spreading, in conjunction with magi, would seem to imply propagation of the faith by means of learned men, or perhaps even the prefiguration of the birth of the Church on earth.

“Rose-Bush” is relatively brief, its simplicity emphasizing the serial quality of the leaps with their organic flow one to another. In the late fourteenth-century lyric “The Four Leaves of the Truelove,” the language of leaping is similarly transformed to botanical springing, but the narrative makes even greater use of the capacity of the leaps topos to stress the vast distance between heaven and hell. Here the true-love plant exemplifies the unity of love among the three Persons of the Trinity and Mary, each of whom is repeatedly figured as one of the four leaves. Even more than in “Rose-Bush,” the power of the verse results from the apt congruity between rising and falling, between the fresh vitality of growth and the dying dropping-off of withered foliage. Because the poet adeptly maintains an alignment between his metaphor and his message, the religious meaning does not overwhelm the natural image or move us completely into the realm of the abstract: the flower insistently and persistently reveals itself through the arc traced out by Jesus’ growing, then lifeless, then revitalized, then transformed body.

In an eco-critical reading of William Dunbar’s lyric “Swete rois of vertew and of gentilnes,” the Trinity College carol, “Ther is no rose of swych virtue,” and the Harley lyric, “Nou skrinkeþ rose ant lylie-flour,” Gillian Rudd has made a plea for keeping in mind the material flowers that lie behind figurative language or allegories. In doing so, she calls attention to the slipperiness of signification in botanical lyrics, an issue I raised for a somewhat different purpose in Chapter 2:

Much of what follows shows that words and images slide across the boundary between real and symbolic, so much so that we might question how much there is indeed a boundary; perhaps we would do better to think of the terms as part of a continuum. Better still we could shed the image of a straight line that “continuum” implies and instead try to think in terms of moving fluidity among a wealth of signification, association, and description.⁴⁹

Given that psycholinguistic studies increasingly suggest that language is not processed in “literal first” terms, the technical distinction between “sense selection” and “sense creation,” which I noted earlier, is also relevant here. The cognitive processing required when we consider a novel metaphor, such as “God is a leaf,” may exist somewhere between “sense selection” and “sense creation.”⁵⁰ Moreover, increasing numbers of studies are favoring the “underspecification” model of cognition, in which the language processor, rather than choosing a particular literal or metaphorical signification for an ambiguous lexeme, defaults to a reading that fails to resolve that ambiguity. This probability suggests that the tendency of medieval religious lyrics to leave ambiguous metaphors unresolved works particularly well precisely because of how we process language.⁵¹ One approach to underspecification takes what psycholinguists have termed a “‘good-enough’ approach to language,” wherein “people often prefer to leave ambiguities unresolved when resources are in short supply or when motivation to undertake all the necessary processing steps is low,” leading to “shallow” comprehension.⁵² But “shallow” would not be the only possibility here, would it? Such a default processing mechanism would also help to explain why supereffability can be so effective: underspecification would allow for what I want to call a much more than good-enough approach. I argued in Chapter 1 that underspecification could be the cognitive mechanism that enables Capgrave’s “full word.” If Rapp and Gerrig are correct when they postulate that processing of metaphor works the same way across distinct types of syntactical units (“lexical items” and “contextual expressions”),⁵³ it would also seem likely that under-specification enables supereffability equally in metaphor and in a poetic, in both Capgrave’s “full word” and the larger structures traced out by Augustine’s “revolving motion” or the “eddying back of sense.”

Keeping such findings in mind, Rudd’s rejection of “a continuum” in favor of “moving fluidity” works particularly well, in the case of “Truelove,” wherever the actions of the leaves of the true-love are the focus of attention, as for example in this stanza, which describes the Incarnation:

Now is this ilk second lef, for owr luf maste,	same; leaf; our love above all
Lyght in that Lady that Gabriell grette;	alighted; greeted
Withowt any treson, so trew for to traste,	treason; believe in
With myrth in a mayden is God and man mette.
Thys is the Fader and the Son and the Holy Gaste—
Thre lefes of lufe withowtyn any lette;	love; hindrance
The fourte is a mayden chosen for chaste.	purity
Swylke another trewluf was never in land sett	such
For bute.	remedy
Thare foure lefes may never fall,	those
Bot evermare thai springe sall,	shall
So gently thai joyn all
On a ryche rute.54 (131–43)	splendid/strong/noble/powerful; root

The motion entailed in following the descent of the Second Person continues inward and downward as the poet describes the juncture of leaves in their liveliness, just the sort of small changeability characteristic of the growth and unfolding of flowers that is nevertheless a constant quality (“evermare thai springe sall”), before the poet’s thought reaches the strong support of the root, with its evocative resonance of the Jesse Tree.⁵⁵ Punningly and suitably, the “root” is a stem, but also a homophonous “rout,” a company, a body, a group of associates.⁵⁶ Moreover, plants are, by their very nature, ever-changing, yet that process of seasonal growth is entirely predictable. Here the “trewluf” is the more remarkable for being perpetual in its vitality: “Thare foure lefes may never fall” but instead will forever provide medicinal aid, the “bute” of line 139.

The poem begins with a chanson d’aventure opening, wherein an unspecified “I” walking through the forest in May comes upon an unhappy maiden, who is calling on Mary for aid. A turtledove overhears her and asks why she is lamenting. The maiden replies that she has been looking everywhere for a “trewluf” without success; she asks the bird for help in learning how to find love that will not fly away. The remainder of the poem consists of the bird’s explanation of what true love is and how to find it. He declares that four leaves, when set together in a true-love plant, exemplify true love, unchangeable and eternal:

Hardely dare I say
Thare is no luf that lastes ay
Withowtyn treson and tray	deceit
Bot it begyn thare. (62–65)	unless

The maiden is, of course, eager to learn about true love but has nothing more to say and virtually drops out of the narrative, which becomes a compressed version of salvation history from the Creation to the end of time, told primarily by means of events from Christ’s life. At the very end of the poem, the “I” briefly reemerges to complete the chanson d’aventure framework and bring the poem back around to its beginning.

Both Susanna Fein and Helen Phillips have written compellingly about the poem’s intriguing form, with Phillips noting the possible influence of the leaps of Christ: “The poem’s structure forms a Truelove knot: the knot has four equal bows and no visible ends; the poem begins and ends with the same words and has forty stanzas which form four equal sections. . . . This quadripartite design probably reflects the tradition of the leaps of Christ.”⁵⁷ The sections to which she refers are defined both by events in Christ’s life and by language of springing or falling. The three pivotal events distinguishing the poem’s four sections are the Incarnation, the Harrowing, and the Last Judgment.⁵⁸ As Fein has shown, the four-part design of the poem was incorporated into its original page layout; although this original does not survive, the layout can be traced from evidence in the extant copies, particularly the Thornton manuscript.⁵⁹

At its finest, the poem glides effortlessly throughout the area I wish not to call a boundary or continuum, its movement easily encompassing the material world, materially imagined; the immaterial, equally materially imagined; and a no-man’s-land in between. The poet’s strategy of persistently referring to each person of the Trinity and Mary as a numbered leaf recalls the unity and strength of the “ryche rute” of line 143. It does so in a way that “First Person,” “Second Person,” “Third Person,” “Mary” could not do, nor yet could “Father,” “Son,” “Holy Spirit,” “Mother.” The sequence “First Leaf,” “Second Leaf,” “Third Leaf,” “Fourth Leaf” places Mary well within the action without claiming for her any sort of divinity.⁶⁰ Moreover, the crucial stanza that tells the Incarnation (quoted above) becomes a vital reference point for the whole of the poem, for all actions within the poem. However much the poem is a work of affect, and of intellect, it is nevertheless didactic as well, as the chanson d’aventure framework indicates, so there is a lesson to be learned here, and that is the answer to the maiden’s quest: what is true love, where can I find it, and can I trust it to be all I hope it will be? The four leaves joined together in a vital enterprise remain central to answering that question, no matter where in the poem we look. In the stanza on the Resurrection, for example, the poet again links all four leaves within one poetic unit, where action and movement predominate:

The fourte lef of that lufe falow61 is for wa	pale; woe
When scho was lefed62 moder, mayden, and wyf	she; left
The fyrst lef full wyghte,63 His will was swa	very powerful/healthy/vigorous; so [strong]
Be assent of the third lef, was thar no stryfe	by
Raysed Thai the second lef betwen Tham twa	two
Thurght grace of the godhed, fro ded unto lyf.
He toke a crose in His hand and furth gon He ga	go
With His flech and His fell and His wondes fyfe	flesh; skin; five wounds
He yode.	went
When He was resyn agayn,
He mett Mary Mawdelayn;
No ferly yf scho war fayn!	no wonder she was delighted
He was hir lech gode. (274–86)	good physician

The materiality of this description is so well realized, from the revitalization of the second leaf to the specificity of Jesus’ body, flesh and skin and wounds and all, walking along. That image is all the more effective for the metaphor that preceded it, the first and third leaves raising the second. Its concrete materiality is underlined by the characterization of Christ as physician, since what do physicians do but examine, and treat, fleshly bodies? Another poem at this point might describe Jesus as a gardener, since John 20:15 tells us Mary Magdalen mistook him for one. Here, however, he is a physician, again recalling the medicinal properties of herbal remedies (“bute,” 139), and of the true-love in particular.

The Vernon refrain lyric “Flourdelys” similarly draws on the broader Truelove tradition, Marian traditions, and the leaps to define its poetic deep structure. The botanical imagery of “Flourdelys” is more extensive and its treatment more complex than that of “Rose-Bush,” yet more tightly compressed in the sense of each line than is “Truelove.” The refrain reports diverse actions of the “Flourdelys” (lily flower), where springing and spreading are two actions among others. Although, like “Rose-Bush,” the poem may, at first glance, appear to be structured by the Marian scheme that makes up its outer frame, its core comprises a compressed narrative of the life of Christ, focusing on life events that coincide with leaps. After an initial invocation of aid, addressed to Mary, the speaker explores a “lesson” (7) to be taught by means of the Flourdelys. The lily flower figures prominently in each refrain, yet its larger significance emerges gradually and deepens as the poem progresses. “Flourdelys” becomes a sort of shorthand for the incarnate Christ on earth and later, more ambiguously, perhaps for salvation itself, or Christ’s enabling of salvation. Throughout, the poem draws on the language of springing and sprouting characteristic of botanical versions of the leaps of Christ. After comparing Mary and Christ to this most prized flower, the speaker shifts to acknowledge the power (“vertu,” 24) of the Flourdelys, which enables the freeing of sinful humanity. The Flourdelys begins with Mary’s answer to Gabriel’s greeting (32), will “springe” from Mary (40), was “sprongen” when her child died for Adam’s sins (48, 41, 47), “was sprad” when that child left the tomb (56), is taught to Adam and Eve during the harrowing of hell (64), is shown to Mary Magdalene when “þis heende [courteous one]” goes “As God and Mon to-gedere” “Bodily boþe in blod and bon” (65, 70, 71), and may be seen by those dwelling in heaven, since the “buirde [scion, lord, child, shoot]” has climbed into the clouds (82, 86). The scheme of leaps underlying deep structure here, then, includes Incarnation, Nativity, Crucifixion, Deposition, Harrowing, Resurrection and Appearance, and Ascension. The poem concludes with Mary’s assumption and crowning in heaven and a brief prayer to Mary and her son for grace and heavenly bliss, that we may dwell in heaven “wiþ þi Flourdelys” (136). Like other botanical lyrics that play on the twinned meaning of “spring” as botanical growth and leap, “Flourdelys” offers Christ’s life as a miniature version of salvation history. The poet relies on our knowing something about Christological associations with the lily and invites us to meditate on the Incarnation as a moment in time as well as an emanative movement that transcends time yet is not in any way bound by time.

In the case of the “Long Charter,” I posed the question of how we might recognize an Incarnational poetic when the Crucifixion is fundamental to that poem’s imagery. Here with “Flourdelys,” the poem’s opening and closing apostrophes to Mary suggest that we might want to class the poem among Marian lyrics. My brief outline showed the leaps pattern, but to see how thoroughgoing the poem’s engagement with the Incarnation is, once again we must read more closely. Earlier I noted that, like many lyrics and carols, this poem at times fails to differentiate between Mary and Jesus as distinct persons, particularly in moments where the botanical imagery is most strongly engaged.⁶⁴ That sort of elision—an imperceptible gliding over from one site of reference to another—is strongly in play here in the refrain’s iterations of the Flourdelys. A refrain naturally sets up the expectation that a certain form is being followed—we expect repetition—yet at its best, a refrain also thwarts our expectations when it offers an apt surprise. It both meets and exceeds our expectations of form. No wonder, perhaps, that both generation and craftsmanship are of special interest to this poet. He begins by linking Mary’s excellence, the lesson his poem will teach, and the poetic craft that makes merit known:

Marie Mayden · Moder Mylde
Þat blisful Bern · in bosum beere	child
Cheef & chast · þou ches of chylde	you who were chosen from childhood
Of alle wymmen · In world þat were
Saue vs sound · and socur vs here	help
As princes is preised · & proued for prys	princess; [her] worth proven
What leode þis lesson · lykes to lere	whatever person; learn
Be token hit is · þe Flourdelys	it is symbolized by
Þat freoli flour · weore fair to fynde	beautiful flower; would be splendid
What gome wolde go · þer-as hit greu3	for whomever; to where it grew
As Maacer65 herof · made in his Mynde66	crafted in his thought about it
Þus kenned him Catoun · his craftes he kneu3	Cato taught him; knew
What segge on soil · þat þat seed seu3	Whoever the person; sowed
Hit is holy · at myn a-vys	it; in my opinion
Aboue þe Braunches · beþ Blosmes neu
Þe lele cheses fair · þe Flourdelys	faithful one courteously chooses

In this encomiastic apostrophe to Mary, the poet acknowledges her singular merit, which he demonstrates first by reference to her having borne Jesus, and second by her having been set apart even as a child. From the very first, then, his focus is on merit and generation. The rest of the poem will be a “lesson” symbolized by the fleur-de-lys. The focus on teaching explains what otherwise might seem a digression in the next stanza, the poet’s assertion that Macer “made in his Mynde” about the flower, as Cato taught him, with the emphatic reiteration of generative, poetic “craftes” that can be taught and practiced. Both topics—teaching and poetic craft—return later in the poem, the latter explicitly connected with God’s creation of the world (116, 119–20), the former with Christ’s bringing Adam and Eve out from hell (64). Macer’s thought in this context calls to mind God’s generous and generative thought, suggesting that the “segge” who sowed the “holy” seed “on soil” (13, 14) might be God, in which case we have moved well beyond talking about a flower in a field, or solely about such a flower. The stanza is notably the more rich on a second reading of the poem, once we know the Flourdelys of the refrain is poised to signify Christ, then Christ as a means to salvation, then salvation, shifting its significance as the poem progresses. The difficult final line to this stanza offers what looks like a pun: both meter and sense urge us to read “lele” as “faithful” or “loyal,” probably referring back to the “gome” who seeks the lily on line 10. “Lele” can also mean “lily,” however, as it punningly seems to in the next line, where Mary is the “lele ladi” and the poem’s center of interest shifts to a striking image of enwrapment in a context that evokes Julian’s use of what Amy Appleford has termed “late medieval death culture.”⁶⁷ “Lele” thus bridges two stanzas, much as “graiþly” (23)/“greiþli” (25) does across stanzas two and three. This is not full-fledged concatenation of the Pearl type, and the poet does not sustain the pattern, but it does serve to increase the sense that form matters here, and that one thought leads naturally to another related one; such connections are portrayed as organic. They are connections, not just similitudes, and they suggest that the developing richness of the lily’s symbolism is not simply symbolic:

Þou lele ladi · I likne to þe	faithful/lily; compare
Þe flour · to þi semeli sone also	beautiful
Þe blisful Blosme · þat euer mihte be	most praiseworthy
Treuly jat was · be-twix 3ou to	two
Whon we weore wrapped · al in wo
Þorw werkes · þat we had wrou3t wrongwys	sinfully
Þi godnes gert vs · graiþly go	caused; suitably
Þorw vertu · of þi Flourdelys	[medicinal] power

The confining enwrapment of “we” who are enveloped by sin, a concept the more woefully expressed for the alliteration on “w” over two lines, is immediately loosened and enables free movement because of Mary’s worth and through the power of the Fleur-de-lys. In “vertu” the poet offers a sidelong reference to the medicinal power of herbs, but also to Christ’s power— both his virulence and his humanity (the “vir” in “vertu” is Latin for “man”)—much as we saw earlier with the Truelove. Here, moreover, the poet puns on the similarity of “gert” (“caused,” from geren) and “gert” (“clothed, encircled,” from girden): Mary’s noble act of accepting God protectively within her womb unwraps us from woe and suitably clothes us, freeing us to move about properly. Just as with Julian, enwrapment suggests both winding sheet and swaddling clothes, with a focus here on the proper development of children, who grow to freedom of mobility under their mother’s care.

With stanza four and the Annunciation begins a shift in address (“So sittyngli hire sawes heo set,” 29) away from the apostrophe to Mary into more direct narrative, and the scheme of the leaps begins. From this point, the poet links backward to themes we have already seen and forward to new ones, leaving us to continue working out the significance of Flourdelys anew with each repetition of the refrain. Stanza five introduces the keyword “springe,” which clinches the pattern as the leaps of Christ. It is especially interesting to compare the Annunciation here with the version in Piers Plowman I discussed in Chapter 4. Gabriel’s words are not given at all, and Mary’s response is addressed not to him but to God. She signals in one word, “soget,” both her recognition of God’s kingship and the intimate nature of what she is asked to do; a “subject” is a servant but may also be a lover:⁶⁸

Ful greiþi was þe graunted grace	readily
Whon Gabriel · from god þe gret	greeted
Þat fel to þi feet · bi-fore þi face
Þe Murieste meetyng · þat euer was met.
So sittyngli hire sawes heo set	fittingly/suitably; consent
As a wommon · boþe war and wys	prudent
“To-seo þi seruant · and þi soget”	behold; subject
And þer bi-gon furst · þi Flourdelys
In hond þou haddest · & heold vr hele	hand; held our well-being/salvation
torw him þat hadde · hei3 heuene in holde	in possession/under control
What Murþe was mad · no Mouþ mi3t mele	mouth might say
Whon þou þat worþly · hed wonnen in wolde	noble one; received in possession
He com to keuere vs · of cares colde	deliver/cure/recover; from
His pepul he put · in paradys
Þat tyde and tyme · þe Angel tolde
Of þe schulde springe · þe Flourdelys

The diction here reflects lordship and land tenure. Mary’s willing subjugation immediately reverses her state: in stanza five she is no longer portrayed as “soget” (31), but she rules, demonstrating both the merit and royal qualities claimed for her in the first stanza (“As princes is preised & proued for prys,” 6). Her royal possession is “vr hele” (33), but it is unclear whether this is an elliptical way of referring simply to her pregnancy (Jesus = our salvation, which she held in physical possession in her womb) or reflects more specifically on her qualities that enable her to assent to that pregnancy. Both readings work, and neither excludes the other. The Incarnation is itself described in terms of lordship and land tenure, making a suitable alignment between humanity’s condition (33) and Jesus’ (36), as well as between Mary’s regality and Christ’s (34).⁶⁹ Line 37 (“He com to keuere vs of cares colde”) masterfully recalls lines 21 and 23 (“Whon we weore wrapped al in wo”; “Þi godnes gert vs graiþly go”) and reverses the imagery of line 21 while reinforcing the imagery of line 23: “he came to deliver us from the lifeless pain of death,” but also “to cure us” (which further recalls “In hond þou haddest & heold vr hele” just above it), and also “to recover us.” Punningly, that last can be taken as “re-cover us,” “cover us again,” or “re-wrap us,” blanketing us with life-giving warmth such as a mother gives; this sense is made salient by “of cares colde.”⁷⁰ Here it is worth noting once more how much of the poem to this point has been concerned with infancy, childhood, generation, and fostering—all pointing toward or to be considered in relation to this moment of Christ’s Incarnation. In the refrain to this stanza comes the strongest hint so far that the Flourdelys might be Christ (“Of þe schulde springe þe Flourdelys,” 40), yet it might be salvation (“In hond þou haddest & heold vr hele,” 33).⁷¹

The promise of these two stanzas is that the Flourdelys will spring. In the next stanza, it does. The poet shows real initiative in not confining the events corresponding to the leaps to a single stanza each; he is not afraid to work across stanzas, giving his verse an elasticity of form that is powerful in its confidence. The simplicity of “the first branch sprang . . . the second branch sprang” works well for a short lyric such as “Rose-Bush”; for this more complex effort, freely working across stanzas offers imaginative possibilities the poet embraces to great effect. With the Crucifixion in stanza six, the Flourdelys springs up; with Christ’s exit from the tomb in stanza seven, it spreads:

Þat Blisful Barn · of þe was born	child
Þat suffred trauayle · boþe trey and tene	affliction
Throly þrusten & throng wiþ þorn	violently stabbed and pierced
Of his cunreden · vnkuynde and kene	by; kindred; unnatural
From top to-torn · al bi-deene	straight away
Þe Iewes þei lugged · his Iuwys	sentence
And dy3ed for Adam deedes · bi-deene	indeed
And þerine was sprongen þe Flourdelys
A studi steer · þer stod ful steere	steady star; securely
For steeres-men · þat bi stremes gun stray	helmsmen
And neore his worþly will weore	if it were not that his excellent will were wise
Þei wolde haue went · a wilful way
No feyntysenes · þei founden in fay	faintheartedness?/deceit?; truth/faith
Þat burth was buried · In Marbel bys	child; dark gray
And whon god wolde · he went his way72	desired
And þenne was sprad · þe Flourdelys

Stanza seven’s imagery is particularly intriguing. Is Christ on the Cross a star that lights helmsmen home, or a rudder securely staying the course?⁷³ His “worþly wille” (51) is contrasted with their “wilful way” (52).⁷⁴ “[I]n fay” has a double sense: as a stock phrase for emphasis in telling a story (“in truth” or “certainly”), and to reinforce the governing image of following a perseverant course, seeking the truth to be found in steadfastly cleaving to [Christian] faith by coming to God through Christ.⁷⁵ Even here, Jesus is described as a child (41, 54), reinforcing the continuity of events flowing from the Incarnation. As Jesus goes his way when God desires it (55), the poet reiterates the imagery of the appropriate path and justly governed will, and the Flourdelys spreads, perhaps even overflowing the confines of stanzaic form here, as it is difficult to construe the syntax for line 57 unless the line modifies “was sprad” from line 56.⁷⁶ Like the “Long Charter” and Piers Plowman, “Flourdelys” associates the freeing of Adam, Eve, and the others with the health and growth of the Church, using imagery of lordship. Whereas in “Rose-Bush” the plant spreads with the visit of the magi, in “Flourdelys,” the plant spreads when Christ leaves the tomb and harrows hell. With that spreading comes Christ’s post-Resurrection ministry on earth, portrayed here as a ministry of teaching and empowerment:

Where his worþli wilnyng was	noble desire
Hit weore to wite77 · whoder he went	it would be worth knowing
þe geynest gate · greiþli he	tas quickest path readily he takes
Til derknes · dipt doun · he decent	into the pit of darkness; descended
þe 3ates he russchede · and al to Rent	gates; battered down; tore to pieces
þer Lucifer · þat luþure lys	where; wicked one
Adam and Eue · bi hond he hent	took
And tau3te hem faire · þe Flourdelys	graciously taught them
þus haþ þis heende · herewed helle	courteous one
Al Adames of-spring · out haþ tan	taken
Þe fend þat was · boþe fers and felle
He ti3ed til a stok · stille as stan
Vp of his graue · þen is he gon
As God and Mon · to-gedere gon Rys
Bodily boþe in blod and bon
To þe Maudeleyn · he schewed þe Flourdelys	Mary Magdalen
Þus purchased he þe pepul heor pees
And goodly for 3af hem · al heore gilt	forgave
And seide Adam · eft nou I þe sese	now I enfeoff you again
In blisse · þat for blod was buld	because of kinship78; fashioned/restored
No wey wonde · but wurch what þou wilt	do not hesitate; do
Þus haþ he now · bitau3t þat wyse	granted to that reasoning man79
And þus feole prophecies · ben folfild	many
Of Marie · wiþ þi Flourdelyse

What does it mean that Adam and Eve are taught “þe Flourdelys”? Are they taught the life of Christ as explained in this poem by means of the metaphor, fleur-de-lys? Are they taught to recognize the Christ, previously unknown to them, here referred to by the metaphor, fleur-de-lys? Are they taught about their salvation? Is it their physical removal from hell that is the “lesson”? It is difficult to say, and that ambiguity effectively keeps all these possibilities in play, through the underspecification of sense. In any event, Adam and Eve are touched physically by Christ, a point the poet makes deliberately (“Adam and Eue bi hond he hent,” 63), in subtle contradistinction to the noli me tangere when Christ makes himself known to Mary Magdalen (72).⁸⁰ The material physicality of his touch evokes his own liberating mobility—flesh, skin, bones and all—in line 71.⁸¹ The same rich ambiguity of signification operates in line 72, where the scriptural narrative tips “Flourdelys” toward “Christ,” but the local context would allow a reading in which what Christ reveals is not just his identity but the further lesson of salvation as well as how he is the means to salvation. When the poet adds the specific detail of the devil tied to a tree, “stille as stan” (68), the image emphasizes Jesus’ busy activity (“Vp of his graue þen is he gon,” 69) and the devil’s real impotence here serves as a foil to Jesus’ earlier steadfast and efficacious cleaving to the Cross as star or rudder (49). As with Imaginatif’s retelling of the Incarnation in Piers Plowman, and as with the springing of the third branch in “Rose-Bush,” associated with the magi, here again springing and spreading are linked with learning, this time at the harrowing, and the instructor is no less an authority than Christ himself. This liberation of Adam, Eve, and the prophets institutes the beginning of the Church in heaven, the communion of saints, just as the Church spreads on earth with the sending forth of the apostles at Pentecost.

With stanza ten the poet begins to bring Mary back into the poem as he prepares to complete the leaps scheme. This stanza draws together several lines of thought suggested by earlier imagery. By this time the dialogue between Christ and Adam is more generally a dialogue between Christ and humanity, to whom Christ bequeaths heavenly bliss in language reminiscent of the Charters of Christ (“Adam eft nou I þe sese / In blisse,” 75–76). Here, though, the repetition of the sound “tau3te” within the word “bitau3t” forges an association between learning about the Fleur-de-lys/Christ/salvation and the promise of salvation itself, the granting of heavenly bliss. In this instance, the clergy are not specifically invoked as an agent for spreading the faith; however, the wider associations of “þenne was sprad,” in conjunction with Christ’s teaching of the faith, appear to settle this portion of the poem within the context of Church we know from Imaginatif’s speech and from “Rose-Bush.” The remainder of line 76 recalls the poem’s initial focus on creation and (poetic) fashioning, while line 77 (“No wey wonde but wurch what þou wilt”) draws yet further on the steady rudder of stanza seven. “Do as you desire” is both a lesson to be learned and an acknowledgement that a lesson has been learned.⁸² Adam’s (and by extension, humanity’s) seisin of heavenly bliss (75–76) results from Christ’s grant. The poet connects salvation with Christ’s teaching by means of an internal chime on the words “tau3te” (64) and “bitau3t” (78).

With the Ascension—the last of the leaps in the poem—yet to come, the poet lingers a moment over Mary and Jesus, imagined together. The language here is reminiscent of the opening of the poem, where they were two excellent flowers on the same stalk (17–20), and it is the first time in the poem that Christ is called by any name, his divine nature now having been made openly known:

Of bounte berestou þe · þe best
Was neuer no buirde · such beute bare	noblewoman/nobleman/scion/child
Crist of þe com · vre cumfort to kest	ordain, make
To 3elde þe þat · we 3erned 3are	what we yearned for eagerly83
At his stei3ynge · þei stod to stare	ascent
How cleer in Clouden · he cloumben is
What wy · in þat worþily wonyng ware	man; noble dwelling place
Þer miht he fynden · þe Flourdelys
Þus was al þis world · in weere	doubt
Þen seide two wy3es · in weedes whyt84	clothes
“To hei3 heuene · what be-holde 3e here?
Is Ihesu take from 3ow · þus tyd?
Apeere he schal · in propre plyt	appropriate/noble state
As he in werke · con vanys”	in physical action has experienced ascent
Her afturward hit weore to wite85	it would be worth knowing
Of hire þat bar · þe Flourdelys

Once again the poet draws attention to Mary’s pregnancy, further linking the virgin and her son through the word “buirde” (82), which emphasizes (noble) lineage and in Middle English is used interchangeably for a noblewoman, particularly the Virgin Mary; a nobleman, or scion; and a child or scion, particularly Christ.⁸⁶ The word thus aptly suits both the botanical theme and the lordship one, and exemplifies the elision of persons typical of medieval botanical metaphor in a religious context. In sound and sense, line 83 (“Crist of þe com vre cumfort to kest”) recalls line 37 (“He com to keuere vs of cares colde”) and continues the themes of ruling (stanzas 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7) and fashioning (stanzas 1, 2, 4, and 10). Following the Gospel in stressing Christ’s physical experience of ascent (94), the poet continues his focus on Jesus’ material body (“Adam and Eue bi hond he hent,” 63; “Bodily boþe in blod and bon,” 71).

As the refrain for stanza twelve suggests, the poet turns back to his original apostrophe to Mary at this point, with an effect similar to a cinematic iris-out, coming round to the circular shape favored by the Pearl-poet.⁸⁷ With Mary’s assumption, he continues the theme of dwelling with the Flourdelys, an idea he had initiated in stanza eleven:

So lelly · his loue · on þe was lent	faithfully
Þi longyng ladi · for to lete	assuage
So semely sondes · after þe he sent	suitable messengers
Be-sydes him-self · to sitte in sete
Þei song al samen · with soun ful swete	in unison
As schewen · and stand · in þi storis
Wiþ more murþes · mi3t neer mon meete
But þer to fynde · þe Flourdelys
Siþen þou · þi worþly wones hast wonnen	since; noble dwelling place
And wones In worschipe · at þi wille	dwell
Vre grith was graunted · vr grace bigunnen	peace/protection
For vs þat was · ordeyned þertille
Puire dette proueþ bi proper skille	reasoning
Þou schalt vs socour · in þi seruys	service
Þat greifest was · for greuaunce to grille	willing; grieve/suffer
And for to bere · þe flourdelys

The mention of “þi storis” (102) subtly brings the concept of writing back to the fore, setting up for the mention of the poet himself in stanza fifteen, a complicated and interesting stanza that complements stanza two, the one that mentioned Macer and Cato. Like stanza two, stanza fifteen begins by way of the nobility of the lily and its ubiquitous growth in nature. By line 116 the Fleur-de-lys is not the flower but the divinity, who governs well-being, knowledge, wisdom, and creation:

Of al þe floures · bi Frith · and Felde	forest
Hit is þe freolokest · for to fynde	noblest
Þat weole & wit · and wisdam welde	eternal bliss
And al þis word haþ wrou3t In wynde88	world; made through the spirit/word
Nou comely kyng · Corteis and kynde	now; courteous
Þat halp vs heere · from vre enemys
Þe mon þat þis matere · made in mynde
Seide · non is lich · to þe Flourdelys	like
Hedde not Adam · don þat dede
Vre bitter bales · hed neuer ben bou3t
On no maner · for no-kenes nede	no kind of
Ne for no werkes · we schuld haue wrou3t
Al þus I þenk it in my þou3t
Monkynde for vs · bi-com so chys	fastidious, proud
His Blisful blod · þorw him þei sou3t
Vs ou3te to prey · to þe Flourdelys
Nou Marie Mayden · Moder clene
Þi semeli sone · þat beres þe Flour	excellent
3if vs grace · ow to qweme	you both; serve, please
And plese Ihesu · vr saueour
Bryng vs out of dette · & dedly synne
To liue and dye · in þi seruys
Heuene blisse · þat we may wynne
And wone þer · wiþ þi Flourdelys	live

Like Langland, the “Flourdelys” poet inserts himself, or to be more precise, a speaker who refers to himself as “þe mon þat þis matere made in mynde” (119), into his poem with an awkwardness born deliberately, it would seem, of his role as a poet.⁸⁹ The “mon” is presumably a learned clerk, in any case a makere who contrasts his own makinge with the divine work of God. In a refrain that falls rather flat, the “mon” says that “non is lich to þe Flourdelys” (120), reinforcing, by this refrain’s lack of poetic brilliance in a poem that elsewhere dazzles, the message that a makere of poems cannot match the Author of Creation, who has wrought so much more in line 116, nor “þe Flourdelys,” who has brought about salvation. In “Flourdelys,” as in other botanical lyrics, the prunable, regenerative growth characteristic of plants suitably expresses the eschatological promise of a generative life force, making its Incarnational deep structure the more effective.

These three botanical lyrics, then, all incorporate the leaps, the broader Truelove tradition, and Marian traditions. They are subtle in their use of the Incarnation as a theme as well as a recurring feature of form, and suggest that we would do well to look more carefully at both religious and secular lyrics as doing a sort of work that is more complex than is implied by terming them “affective” or “didactic.” These poems have a particular sort of work to do, work that engages a reader’s memory and insight. That work depends heavily on form, and engagement with form—perhaps more urgently than it does with theme.

Before leaving the botanical image group, I want to consider the case from the visual arts, the lily crucifixion, for a similarly complex problem in reading. The lily crucifixion intrigues me by answering positively a question I had thought might only have a negative result: what does an Incarnational poetic look like in another medium? Moreover, the lily crucifixion demonstrates that late medieval interest in the Incarnation was not just confined to poetry.

Botanical Imagery in the Visual Arts: The Lily Crucifixion

With the lily crucifixion, the Incarnational image group in play is obviously botanical growth or life force. The range of dates for surviving examples is narrow but the range of locations broad, indicating that the topos spread fairly rapidly and broadly across nearly the whole of England and into Wales from the middle of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth.⁹⁰ The fact that so many lily crucifixions have lasted to the present day, despite the widespread destruction of religious art in England at the Reformation, suggests that the tradition was reasonably well known in its time. Even more intriguingly, no two are alike; further, they were crafted in a wide range of media, meaning that this is not a case of one craftsman or his workshop using and reusing a design.⁹¹ With the exception of the two illuminations, lily crucifixions were intended for public presentation in a church, pointing to a public devotion rather than a private one. Three examples are carved on tombs, indicating that the motif was deemed particularly suitable for thinking about the afterlife, perhaps because of its eschatological promise.

The extant lily crucifixions differ enough that they deserve to be studied in their own right; nevertheless, certain general features are worth further attention here. Although several lily crucifixions survive as isolated images, either they can be shown to have lost their original Annunciation context or that context is implied by the two-handled pot.⁹² Further, the power of the image resides in part in its being the “ground” to the Annunciation’s “figure.” Where the Annunciation context is preserved, the crucifix is not a focus of attention for Gabriel and Mary, who do not acknowledge its presence. In several instances the lily crucifixion is off to the side or off-axis (as in the Welsh illumination); elsewhere, the scale of the lilies and two-handled pot relative to the diminutive Jesus figure indicates that the lily crucifixion likely was not a central focus of the original scene (as at Oxford, and Long Melford). In these cases, the viewer must actively look to see the image. It is as if the artist has counted on our expecting a pot of lilies, and perhaps not looking too closely at the plant for that reason, but then when we notice the Jesus, the surprise draws our attention the more strongly because of its variation from the form we expected, prompting the question, why this, here? What does it mean? The answer must come in the conceptual leap that links historical times: the moment of Incarnation; the moment of Crucifixion; Christ’s Ascension; and the future moment of the viewer’s own anticipated resurrection, promised by the lily’s association with Easter. In this concentrated interplay of death and life, the focus is on life, and particularly on beginnings: Mary’s assent leads to Christ’s conception, birth, death, ascent, return. Unlike the leaps of Christ topos, however, or the Jesse Tree, the way a viewer arrives at such an understanding of moments in time is not precisely, or not necessarily, sequential.⁹³ Rather, the flash of insight that enables a viewer to put several time referents of the image together alternates with the fragmentary view of each individual moment considered all on its own: as I noted earlier, this image points to a way of comprehending both “all at once” and “one at a time.”⁹⁴ While it is possible to choose one point in time on that continuum for one’s meditative focus, the focus of the Annunciation scene in the foreground is the beginning of Christ’s life, and the lily crucifixion suggests that all other actions of Christ or moments in his lifetime are to be understood in relation to that.

In cases where the lily crucifixion itself is quite detailed, the juxtaposition between life and death may be seen even without the Annunciation context, as two of the stained glass windows demonstrate. The window at St. Michael at the North Gate exhibits a tense energy that is somewhat lacking from the Holy Trinity window. The patterning of its red backing adds depth to the image, filling in the redness of the blood that is precisely not visible on Christ’s wounded body. The discrete foliage pattern within that deep red lends it an organic quality, as if it were the inside of a heart or wound. The composition as a whole maintains a thrust upward within the horizontal confines of the narrow window pane. The stretch of Christ’s tautly pulled arms is made more severe by the turned-up lilies that are tightly compressed into a narrow space, while the lower lilies enhance this effect by having room to extend their unfolding blooms. They reach outward to the edge of the window, paralleling Christ’s arms exactly, while the lilies at the ends of the branches to which he is nailed abruptly shoot upward, reinforcing the central axis, with its tallest bloom. The severity of that upward movement counterbalances the drooping force of Christ’s head, which seems to be sinking lower and lower. The intensity of the upward thrust is further amplified by the alignment of Christ’s legs with the central axis and also by the slight downward swing of his upper torso. His vulnerability is emphasized by his fully frontal positioning and the spikiness of the leaves that surround his body, as well as by the enormous size disparity between him, the lilies, and the outsized two-handled pot that threatens to engulf him if the rising energy were to cease. Yet the droop of his head and the painful stretch of his arms are no match for that overwhelming upward surge, which, together with the bright color scheme, prevails to emphasize life over death.

Figure 4. Annunciation, Add. MS 17520A, ff. iv-2r, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. By permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru/The National Library of Wales.

Figure 5. Lily crucifixion, St. Michael at the North Gate, Oxford. Photograph Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.

Figure 6. Lily crucifixion, Holy Trinity Church, Long Melford, Suffolk. Photograph Richard Kieckhefer, June 2008.

The Holy Trinity window achieves a similarly vital effect through somewhat different means. This window is obviously much reconstructed, making it difficult to tell precisely how it might have looked, especially toward the bottom where its pot is missing.⁹⁵ Nevertheless, it is a striking and powerful image. At first glance the subject is somewhat difficult to discern: the muted tones of Christ’s flesh and garment blend with the yellow and white of the lilies, the organic swing of his emaciated body mimicking their drooping heads. The blue of the field here lends a cooler meditative tone than does the red of the Oxford glass. Death is suggested by the droop in the lower lilies and counterbalanced by the liveliness of the upper three, with their bell-like trumpets flared to their fullest extent. The eye is encouraged to read in a circular pattern, the lowered blooms leading the gaze down and the lower (reconstructed) foliage and central axis thrusting upward again, directing the gaze to Christ’s face. The tonalities of the colors blend the figure of Christ with the lilies so that he seems a natural and organic extension of their growth.

In both examples, movement and compositional restraint push against confining boundaries, and scale prompts a consideration of meaning: why are the lilies so large, the Christ so diminutive? We might be inclined to say that, compositionally and formalistically, the lily crucifixion is secondary to the main action of the Annunciation. Yet contemporary examples of Incarnational poetics in literature correct such a mode of reading, which presupposes that the most important element is prominent: centered and larger than others. Like an Incarnational poetic, the backgrounding quality of the lily crucifixion is central to its effect. Botanical imagery is particularly apt in a context that emphasizes life and regenerative growth. Moreover, in several cases, the artist thought imaginatively about how to extend the botanical imagery beyond the confines of the Annunciation scene and sometimes into the fabric of the church in a way that taps into further Christian imagistic traditions. At Abingdon, for example, the lily crucifixion occurs within a Jesse Tree. In the alabaster at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the lily crucifixion links two separate panels in a sort of Jack-in-the-beanstalk arrangement, with Jesus physically in the Trinity panel above the Annunciation while the words of greeting Gabriel speaks coil down around the lily stalk, demonstrating the combined agency of all three Persons of the Trinity in the emanative action. At Tong, the lily crucifixion on the master’s stall is quite close to an extremely interesting bench end depicting Christ and the apostles. This bench end shows the Ascension, or perhaps the establishment of the Church in John 15:5 (“I am the vine; you are the branches”), with grapes on the vine below further suggesting Eucharistic overtones; grapevines further run throughout the carving around the choir area of the church. In an age that saw the proliferation of devotions to Mary and increasing interest in ever-bloodier remembrances of the Passion, it seems remarkable that this conjunction of two highly popular themes did not spread more widely to illustrations in books of hours or to devotional lyrics: the lily crucifixion appears to have flourished in the visual arts only, primarily in church furnishings, during a certain period of years, in England and Wales. In this connection, it might bear repeating that exhortations to feel Christ’s pains are absent from most late medieval writing with a strong Incarnational interest. The Crucifixion is an important part of these works, as it is of the lily crucifixion, but the emphasis is not primarily on the wounds, nor on the blood, nor on Christ’s suffering. Just as the lily crucifixion juxtaposes the crucifixion with the incarnational moment from which it flows, an Incarnational poetic suffuses a work by manifesting itself in underlying structures, making the Incarnation an important part of the work as a whole while not focusing attention directly or primarily on the Incarnation itself. Visually intriguing on its own, the lily crucifixion is a surprising find in the visual arts, since its Incarnational basis is textual more than imagistic: how can one recognizably depict what cannot be seen directly—the Incarnation itself, or the hypostatic union? As I have argued, one important aspect of an Incarnational poetic hinges on an underlying structure that rings a series of changes over the Incarnation through repetition with variation. That back-grounded repetition nevertheless suffuses the foregrounded narrative with theologically significant resonance. The lily crucifixion shares this technique, and does so to great effect.

Figure 7. Annunciation, Jesse Tree ceiling, St. Helen, Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Photograph Richard Kieckhefer, June 2008.

Figure 8. Annunciation with Throne of Grace, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. By permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Figure 9. Bench end: Christ with Apostles, “I am the vine” (?)/Ascension (front), St. Bartholomew, Tong, Shropshire. Photograph Chris Hunt, March 2012.

Figure 10. Bench end: Christ with Apostles, “I am the vine” (?)/Ascension (back), St. Bartholomew, Tong, Shropshire. Photograph Chris Hunt, March 2012.

Figure 11. Bench end: Christ with Apostles, “I am the vine” (?)/Ascension (back), St. Bartholomew, Tong, Shropshire. Photograph Chris Hunt, March 2012.

In making the hypostatic union so central to the work that form does, an Incarnational poetic encourages a process of thought that comes back again to that good and fundamental beginning. In all of these poems, as in the lily crucifixion, the Incarnation is the pivot point around which thought and form coalesce. By a sort of revolving motion, as Augustine proposed for his word “word,” each work circles back to its beginning through its middle and its end: in repetition and variation, the seeking of God within poetic and plastic form continually comes round to Christ’s humanity and its affinity with ours.