Vox Clamantis

Translation by Robert J. Meindl and Mark Riley

Here begins the Chronicle called Vox Clamantis.

In the beginning of this modest work, the author intends to describe

how the peasant serfs rashly arose against the freeborn and the nobility

of the realm. And because an affair of this sort was like an abominable

and hideous portent, he says that he saw in a dream various mobs of

the rabble transformed into different kinds of domestic animals.

However, he says that those domestic animals, turning away from their nature,

took upon themselves the savagery of wild beasts. Concerning the causes for which such outrages occur among men, he discusses further according to the divisions of this book, which is arranged in seven parts, as what follows below will clearly show.

Here begins the prologue of the first book.

     Ancient writings hold lessons for those yet unborn,

Something that has happened commands belief.

Although the common opinion may maintain that dreams

Contain no content worthy of belief,

Nevertheless, works written in the days of old

Certainly teach us to the contrary.

It is plain from Daniel that dreams do signify,

Nor was sleeping Joseph’s vision groundless.

Nay, the good angel who watches within a man

Always protects him with vigilant love;                                               10

And although sleep may possess the outer body,

He visits our subconscious and lends strength.

Often he reveals presages in sleepy dreams,

That men may know the causes of crises.

Hence I think that the dreams I saw in the nighttime

Brought portents of a distinct circumstance.

What sort the vision was, and when in which king’s year,

These things you can find out in these writings.

     If you should seek the writer’s name, here I disguise

My discourse, folded within three verses.                                          20

Take Godfrey's first letters and bequeath them to John,

Let Wales conjoin to them its beginning.

Beheaded, let "ter" grant the remaining letters,

Showing, when combined, the name's arrangement.

Propose, however, nothing in the scribe's praise, but

Grasp for yourself what the writings provide.

For I write nothing in search of praise, and my work

Is not concerned with my reputation.

I shall address the plights my land lately suffered;

It's righteous work to tell a nation's deeds.                                        30

I'm allowed to weep, since I'll describe tearful times,

That it be a guide for posterity. 

As our state is doleful, so doleful is our song.

The writing suitable to its matter.

All of this work that is lachrymose, the reader

Should understand, was written with my tears.

My pen drips with these abundant tears as I write;

While I'm borne by zeal, heart and hand tremble.

When I try to write, the weight of the work presses

My hand, and fear then steals away my strength.                              40

He who goes on with this work and its threatening times

Will find nothing pleasant in the whole poem.

If the voice in my frail chest were to be firmer,

And I had many mouths with many tongues,

It still would not be possible for me to tell

Everything about the present day's ills.

My heart is so blocked by the pollution of sins,

That my poem flows in a slower vein.

A journey to Rome is long for a pulled hamstring,

A small book, hard work for a simple mind.                                      50

I ask pardon rather than praise, because my will

Is good, if my sense too small for the task.

Add, my muse, order to the Latin I've gathered,

And grant, my mistress, words that suit your book.

True dreams indeed, filled with fear, I intend to sing,

Whose meaning perturbs the depths of the heart.

May he whose name I bear, whom the isle of Patmos

Received in Revelations, guide this work.

     Here he clarifies at first in which king’s reign, and also in which month and year, this event, whose course follows, befell him. Beyond that, he commends, according to how it used to be, the fecundity of this land where he then was, in which as well, as he says, delights of practically every kind came together. And he talks further about the loveliness of the season, and likewise about the peacefulness of the day, which, however, preceded a very terrible dream.

Here begins the first book.

     It happened that, in the fourth year of King Richard,

When June proclaims the month to be its own,

The moon, leaving heaven, hid her light beneath earth,

And Lucifer, Aurora’s spouse, arose.

New light arises from its setting, Aurora 

Glows from the nether regions, and brings day.

She renews day with light and holds forth wondrous dawns,

Since her light, fled, brings night and, returned, day.

Shining rays radiate from Phoebus reflected,

And heaven’s joyous face shines upon earth.                                     10

The shadows gone, bright Aurora beholds the morn,

And, seeing her blithe, all on earth adore.

Shining, she makes rosy-red doorways glorious,

And courtyards, with her freshness, full of pink.

Phoebus in his wain, agleam with shining emeralds,

Burns hotly in Cancer with a new fire.

He makes all fruitful and full, feeds, favors, augments, 

Gives life to all that sea and earth bring forth.

Each scent that rightly can, each beauty, shining light,

Splendor and display adorn his chariot.                                             20

Gold is the axle, nor is the pole otherwise,

And golden splendors shine on its curved wheels.

A row of silvery gems glitters along the yoke,

Whilst chrysolite constituted its spokes.

Fiery stallions draw the Thunderer’s chariot

Behind them, hastening across the sky.

     Refulgent in his royal robe, he sits enwrapped,

And all the world lies open to his sight.

Before his throne pass the four seasons of the year, 

Which are adorned with their various days.                                       30

Wreathed in white, summer stands nearby on his right side,

And all the creation venerates her.

Everything blooms then, then is a new age of time,

And in the fields gamboling heifers play.

Then is the field fecund, then the time of calving,

And, too, all creeping things renew their sport; 

Flowers in the fields garb themselves in diverse hues,

And birds sing, warbling from their untaught throats.

The grass that has lain long hid finds the secret way

By which to breezes it then lifts itself.                                           40

And the morning star then thaws out the frozen fields,

And stirs the birds to fuss among their chicks.

Icy bristling winter has then shed its frosty

Locks, and the earth has been restored to ease.

What it buried, winter yields up from icy cold,

And fallen snow wastes in the warming sun.

The leaves return, shorn by the cold from off the trees,

And summer’s progress reigns in every grove.

It has soaked the soil with dew, gives earth grass, the woods,

Leaves, and the trees abundant, pleasant fruit.                                   50

It has renewed a thousand blooms with various crowns;

Beneath its law the grassy field grows green.

Flora, her countenance joyous, visits her realm,

And the field sports, filled with floral color.

With gathered violets, which earth grows sown by none,

The freeborn rustic maid adorns herself.

There were as many colors there as nature has,

And earth preens, painted with varied blossoms.

O how I would have counted the colors bestrewn,

Yet could not, their abundance was so great!                                     60

     In enclosed gardens just like paradise, fragrant

White lilies grow mingled with red roses.

In the meadows are primroses, girt by hedgerows,

And every herb that medicine approves.

The powers of the herbs are those that can bring health

By their seed, by their juice, or by their root.

From the green sod the earth births a purple flower,

Which nature embellishes by her laws.

Balsams, spices, cassia with nard, resinous

Myrrh have all established their places here.                                     70

Purple violets, dewy roses, ever white

Lilies contended to dwell in this place.

That place alone claimed for itself all that the air,

The sea, and the earth cherished and held good.

Here is earth’s splendor, its bloom, the glory of things,

Which holds all the delights our custom seeks,

Planted with trees, sown with grasses, in every gift

Surpassing what man desires for himself.

     It’s a second paradise there, for whatever

Human mind desires, blessed earth brings forth,                               80

Abounding in flowing springs and pregnant with seed,

Adorned with flowers and fruitful good things.

The ground, saturate with dew, takes on delightful

Powers, and fosters the different new plants. 

Thence the grove is clothed with leaves, the garden with blooms,

The meadow with grass and the soil with sprouts.

The wood renews its foliage, and every meadow

Greens that winter covered over with mud.

The west winds caress flowers that were born unsown,

And bright warmth from above adorns the ground.                           90

The season brought forth song among the birds, and each

Grove rings with various piercing voices.

Repeating its song with its clear throat, the cuckoo

Calls and witnesses to the new season.

Aurora’s messenger, the rhythmic lark, flutters

Above and sings on high into God’s ear;

The turtledove, joyous for the verdant season, 

Vows her compliant heart unto her mate;

Philomena in her complaint makes good her lost

Nature, and with her notes proclaims her tale.                                  100

And Procne sings, too, about her sister’s betrayed

Maidenhood, so great are deceits in love.

A thousand thousand birds, like organs, sound their songs,

And just as many flowers scent the fields. 

Between them they contend whether song to the ear

Brings the more pleasure, or scent to the nose.

But their suit was mild and their discord in accord,

For both estates shine with equal merit.

     When nature fills all the woods with her law's sweetness,

And the songs of birds echo on all sides;                                               110

When the beauty of the flowers fills the broad fields,

And grassy plants nourish the flowery mead;

When sweet Eurus light breathes, resounding in the boughs,

And pure waters slap their banks with a sigh; 

Then every creature joys in the peaceful season,

And fish take to the stream bed for the heat.

Enjoyment was renewed for everything alive

By the pleasant breezes of the season.

And since, seeing such things, the eye is cheered, it takes

Them to the deepest chambers of the heart.                                       120

And the ear, hearing this, prompts the sighs of the heart

With which Venus calls love’s aid to a lad.

Behold! such was the day which the lovely season

Gave me to wander in my joyfulness.

     Everything has an end; thus evening at last came,

When the sunset is wont to claim the day.

That still day completed its allotment of hours,

And songs ended, fell still with their sweet notes.

Night had sunk the sun’s fiery rays in its darkness,

And sleep constrained a man to go to bed.                                         130

Then, with the dying day, I bowed my body down,

Since sleep is wont to soothe the weary limbs.

Sadness after joy, clouds after Phoebus, sickness

After times of good health will tend to come.

Thus the day once so bright had barely concluded,

Before the dark shadow of night arrived.

Behold! Dark clouds hid the lurking constellations,

A gold moon fled, and night then lost its fire.

Bootes had turned his cart ‘round, with its pole slanted,

And had not set a straight course in the sky.                                      140

The ill-starred constellation, its center loosening,

Sent Tartarus raging upon the earth.

     Awakened from rest, my eyes not yet soothed again

By sleep, I'm routed by my wake mind’s fear,

Lo! sudden my hair stands, my flesh quakes, my heart’s core

Is numbed, and my senses turn to water.

Thus, tossing relentlessly, I retrace in mind

What the reason is for my sudden fear.

Thus wakeful abed, I ponder many things, pour

Out my heart, my mind wandering about.                                               150

It was the time when all is still, when random dreams

Rush into hearts as minds are slumbering;

But neither sleep nor dreams had as yet ensnared me,

When dread assured me evil was at hand.

It was midnight and heavy eyelids weight my plaints,

Yet relief for my eyes is slow to come.

Awake, I spent most of the night in worrying,

Not knowing what fateful labor drew nigh.

I saw times that had passed, and dreaded the future,

And finally the shadows closed my eyes.                                           160

So when the frustrated night’s greatest part was done,

Sleep sudden overcame my weary eyes.

I had a little rest, until morning’s star lit

Aurora’s fire, and then I had my dreams.

Chapter 2

     Here begins a dream, when he says that on a certain Tuesday he saw various mobs of the rabble, the first of which was seen suddenly to be changed into the likeness of asses.

     By the time sluggish sleep had transfixed my still limbs,

My spirit had already been snatched up.

I thought I walked in fields to gather some flowers,

When Mars himself venerates his own day.   

My way had not been long, when near at hand I saw                                    

A host of very frightening portents,                                       170

Many malicious sorts of the common people,

Wandering through the fields in untold mobs.

And while my eyes thus looked upon the swirling crowds,

And I marveled at so much peasantry,

Lo! the curse of God flashed suddenly upon them,

And, changing their shapes, turned them into beasts.

Those who before had been men, of innate reason,

Took the likeness of irrational beasts.

Different shapes characterized different mobs,

Marked each one by its own occupation.                                   180

Since dreams signify, I’ll show the wondrous events

That make me yet more fearful now I wake.

     I saw rebels, by sudden novelty, prideful

Asses, and nobody held their bridles.

For, their guts suffused with the fury of lions,

They ventured forth in search of their own prey.

For halters are useless, and can’t control their heads,

While the asses prance wildly through the fields;

Lo! their racket terrified all the citizens,

While they bray their hee-haws all together.               190

The donkeys have become violent wild burros,

And what had been useful is now useless.

They decline further to carry sacks to the villes;

They don’t want to bend their backs with the weight;

Nor do they care for the coarse grasses in the hills,

But from now on seek something more tasty.

They drive others from their homes, and want without right

To have the rights of horses for themselves.

     The asses from now on presume to enjoy jeweled

Saddles, and to have their manes always combed.                 200

As old Burnellus once so foolishly wanted

His own docked tail to be lengthened anew,

So these wretches seek in vain for new spacious rears,

To be from behind alike lion and ass.

The ass adorned his back with a leonine pelt,

And his vainglory overstepped all bounds.

Because his tail was not the equal of his head,

Against nature he sought help for his lot.

Thus the foolish asses attempt to aggrandize

Themselves with what nature has denied them.                     210

They did not care for the tail that he who bestowed

Their ears planted, but thought it was too vile.

     The mind’s foolish thinking is wont to ponder much

That hinders more than carries out its wish.

Inborn stupidity gives birth to every grief

Of a fool, and guarantees a bad end.

Great things suit great people, and small things, small people,

But those who are born low want to be grand.

A thought that has lasting effects is sudden born,

And lightly incurs an endless burden.                                    220

So the foolish asses, whom arrogance stirs up,

Refuse neglected duties set by every law.

The insanity in the air corrupted them,

So they were changed as if portents for me.

Those whom I had known formerly by their long ears

Bore long horns in the midst of their foreheads.

The two-edged sword does not cut more fiercely than those,

And they were drenched with the blood from fresh wounds.

They who, lazy by nature, were wont to loiter,

Ran at the fore with the quickness of stags.                           230

Does the leopard not beat the ass at leaping light?

Yet then the ass bested him at leaping.

The lowly ass had at that time a longer tail

Than had, alas! the splendid lion himself.

Whatever the will of the asses bade had law’s

Force, and their new right put the old to flight.

But their asinine manner signified they were

Dull and crude, because they had no reason.

When I saw the foolish creatures, I was afraid,

And trusty foot would take me no farther.                             240

Chapter 3

     Here he says that in a second dream he saw a mob of rabble turned into oxen.

     Behold! with them then came oxen whom no one dared

To prick with goad, nay everyone feared them.

Against the rules of oxen, they spurned the plowman,

And would not be led, for they had new law.

A raging ox today gores who yesterday

Was easily led by the horn to plow.

They who had been lately tame refused their duty,

Their brows raised aloft with menacing horns.

They said they would no longer be yoked to the plow,

But wanted to bear free their unbowed necks.                       250

Henceforth they will not eat chaff nor coarse straw either,

But seek out where there’s better sorts of grain.

Since they’ve reformed themselves, Nature gives up their forms,

And transforms the oxen into monsters.

They have the paws of bears, and tails just like dragons,

So every person, fearful, shrinks from them.

From their cavernous mouths they emit sulphurous flames,

Which water can’t quench when they issue forth.

Devastating heat consumes whatever is touched

By the flame, be it wood or be it stone.                     260

No herdsman is able to ward off these oxen,

Which turn to ruin the countryside and towns.

     The jaws of the bulls of Colchis, which stronghanded

Jason slew, did not spew such sulphurous flames. 

With these flames, the oxen kindle more rustling roofs,

And devour them with the fire of their breath.

The bull of Minos, which Neptune gave him, did not

So harm the plains, when he was raging mad,

More than these oxen wasted fields, and in town caused

Fearful damages in their mad frenzy.                                     270

Neither Nessus, changed to a bull’s likeness and by

Achilles conquered when he waged him war,

Nor the centaurs nor fierce Minotaur himself so

Warred upon men as, in this fearful time,

These oxen did. Behold! abandoning their plows,

They brought about the violent deaths of men. 

     Through the empty fields they leave the tools of their work

Scattered, and plows hold no sway over them.

Behold! their rakes, hoes, and mattocks thus lie about,

Plow beams and moldboards lack handle and ropes.            280

No yoke, coupling collar, nor halter is at hand,

No alignment stake, plow tongue nor haft lends aid.

There is no use for plows, and shares are forsaken;

Harrows are not allowed to do their tasks.

Wagon and driver are gone, and carts are idle;

They are of no further usefulness now.

The only road for the farmer’s produce remains

Lawless, and they are untamed by reason.

Thus, wherever you look, lie lands without fieldhands,

And abandoned fields that nobody claims.                                290

If that’s the way fields are going to be tended,

Granaries wait in vain their promised crops.

The ox is lion, leopard, bear, and it is plain

That it does not remember its nature.

Now, because I saw the baleful oxen wander

The furrow untamed, my mind was disturbed.

O alas! I said, the care of the fields will cease,

And there’ll be fearful famine in my day.

Chapter 4 

     Here he says that in his dream he saw a third mob of rabble turned into swine.

     My sleep yet continued and seized my weary limbs,

And heaped in addition more dreams on me.                         300

Then raging crested swine, possessed by the devil,

I saw milling about in great numbers.

A great assembly of them had come together,

Corrupting the air with their foul ordure.

Lo! raging piglets imitated hogs; young boars,

Their sires; and the sty held them no longer.

The boar makes a compact with his suckling comrade,

So they'll root up more soil working as one.

Sow and boar ally themselves with their fellow pig,

To do more harm and cause more wickedness.                      310

I saw the impure swine tore up the earth so much,

Scarce nothing was left whole to withstand them.

No swineherd was there, in the customary way,

Who could drive them from the grainfields of men.

No one was there able to insert rings in their

Snouts, so that they can’t dig their fearsome ruts;

And no one could affix about their bristled necks

Restraints, but every road was free to them.

Nature so wanders along a crooked pathway,

That the swine have a wolf’s ways, not a pig’s.                              320

     Among them there was a boar that Kent had brought forth;

No country could produce one like to it.

Its eyes glowed red and from its breast it exhales flames,

Which scarcely exempt one home from their fire.

Breath that sears the towns like lightning roars from its mouth,

And it makes war with elephantine tusks.

When it squeals piercingly, hot foam, mixed with men’s blood,

Streams forth across its brawny forequarters.

It gushes its hissing foam out upon the fields,

As well as fresh blood from some fellow's throat.                             330

What its head strikes, however strong, falls to the ground,

No one's able to survive its assaults.

Its fearsome neck bristles like a battle standard,

And in its rage it has a tiger’s look.

Its hairs stand on end, like the stiff shafts of the spears,

That carry the baleful banners of hell.

Like a laden cart groaning, or a river’s course

Roaring, the boar goes by with a rumble.

This beast tramples upon crops growing in the fields,

And treads the grain down into flattened straw.                     340

The boar thereby grew so that no grass pasture could

Produce savage beasts larger than the brute.

No place can be safe which such a beast menaces,

Except heaven, where evil cannot go.

The beast’s aroused anger exceeded hell’s furies;

At his coming the whole country trembled. 

But from the north came another swine, and it joined

The boar, so they could both rip up deep ruts.

     The Tegean wood did not produce such a fierce boar,

Although that one in Arcady was huge.                                 350

It did not so rouse Hercules’ wrath in the hills,

Nor assault other people with such force,

As these swine, seen in my dreams, who caused a thousand

More damages in a thousand more ways. 

That fiercely savage boar was not so destructive

That Meleager slew in woodsy lair,

As these wrathful pigs, fitted with tusks as weapons,

Who raged worse and caused more violent harm.

Neither dregs nor lees pleased them, nor was swill as food

To the liking of the beasts we speak of.                                360

They did not search out pods for themselves, or acorns,

But pillaged the better things that they saw.

Neither thick slops nor plain water were good enough

For them to drink, but they gulped down good wine.

Since their nature was unaccustomed to the wine,

They lay like fallen trees from drunkenness.

The greed of the pigs grew until rich folks in towns

Could scarcely enjoy their own food in peace.

The sty is no longer a fit lodging for pigs;

They need a dirty bed and pillow too.                                  370

They even tread in their filth beneath courtly roofs,

And, in city’s midst, attack those nobler.

Once disfigured, they were now transfigured, and those

Who had been swine cultivate proud figures.

They grunted just like lions who bellow loudly,

At whose sound Echo convulses the woods.

They were the swine into whom the evil spirit

Entered, just as it says in Holy Writ.

Chapter 5 

     Here he says that he saw in his dream a fourth mob of rabble turned into dogs.

     Afterwards I saw standing ten times a thousand

Barking dogs, and the fields shook with their voice.             380

Lo! the light’s winged herald had issued forth his song,

And the raging wrath of dogs beats the air.

But a food scrap that falls from the master’s table

Was not for these dogs, nor was any bone.

No, they demand with their threats better nutriment,

And where they go they eat up all the fat.

However, there are no well-bred dogs among their

Company, but curs whom no school has trained.

They neither course in the chase nor bay joyously

To horns, nor abide that which isn’t base.                              390

They don’t want to traverse the woods to seize the hare,

Nor to drive with their energy the stag.

Instead, they prefer to bark at the heels of men

From behind, and cause them much discomfort.

     Cut and Cur course swiftly through the back alleyways,

Leaving their vile huts out of viciousness.

The shepherd’s dog is on hand, and the one that guards

The hall, barking at night; often they bite.

Every bakery and kitchen alike lets slip

A broken chain to release its own dog.                                  400

And I saw the huge mastiffs of the butchers come,

And the dog from the mill didn't stay home.

The stables couldn't hold experienced barkers back,

Who came as well and joined with their comrades.

There was a one-eyed dog, and a three-legged mutt

Limped behind them and barked with his comrades.

The cur snarling in a hoarse voice then abandoned

His dung pile and aspired to a new place.

These are the dogs it doesn’t pay to stroke their backs,

To pull their tails or, playful, hug their heads,                       410

For angry all the time, they bare to you their fangs,

And in their rustic way don’t hold with love.

     They all join together, young and old, and as one

Run about with their jaws ready to bite.

They walk in a proud manner with their tails erect,

Nothing is safe from them that they can rend.

The jaws of dogs are deformed by the tusks of boars;

Their bite is pestiferous and grievous.

The more food they consume, the less they’re satisfied;

Insatiable hunger persists in them.                                         420

They for whom lodging in the night was manure,

Pampered their filthy limbs upon soft beds.

Their numbers were so great that none of them maintained

Whatsoever regard for proper rank.

O! if anyone had heard them, how the world shook,

Astonished by their voices far and wide,

He would have said then that the ears of no estate

Had heard before the likeness of their howls.

     And when the dogs’ racket comes down to Satan’s ears,

And the inferno joys with the new sound,                              430

Lo! Cerberus, the lower world’s dog and hell’s guard,

Cocks his ear and then in his joy goes mad;

And in his fury he bursts apart with fire

The chains from his neck by which he was bound.

And leaping forth he pierced at once the core of hell,

And swiftly hastened his journey to earth.

So comrade and peer allies with comrades and peers,

A wicked leader leads the wicked dogs.

So a raging leader from hell makes everything

Rage more, and out of men he fashions dogs.                                 440

     And when grieving Hecuba changed herself and took

A rabid dog’s shape, she was not as fierce,

Indeed, as these mongrels whose anger raged, who bit

And chewed on every limb that they could seize.

The dogs that hunted and rent Acteon, Cadmus’

Nephew, did not practice such wickedness.

That monstrous giant Geryon, whom long ago

Spain birthed, bearing the heads of three canines,

Did not thus sharpen his bloody teeth by the deaths

Of men, nor was he then so destructive,                                450

That there wasn't yet more blood-soaked human slaughter

By these dogs of which I myself now speak.

Such warfare was not waged by the murderous beast

That Diana, exiled from the city,

Once sent to Athens to destroy its citizens,

Nor did so many men succumb to it.

Cephalus’ dog itself, which once drove the beast from

The city, did not have their endurance.

That's how these were, at whose vicious attacks every

Citizen and freeborn man shook with fear.                            460

Chapter 6 

     Here he says that in his dream he saw a fifth mob of the rabble turned into cats and foxes. He explains the cats as domestic servants. He explains that the foxes, the criminals freed everywhere from the prisons that were broken open, then became their comrades.

     Just when I thought I had seen it all in my dream,

My onrushing vision showed new portents.

Now I saw approaching foxes and cats without

Number, who showed themselves peers of the dogs.

Nothing above or beneath the earth lies hidden

From them, for indeed they see everything.

They dash about the fields and there probe the crannies;

From woods and meadows they take what there is.

Not town, nor stone citadel, nor proper wall then

Denies them entrance when they want to come.                    470

They penetrate strongrooms and enter chests without

A key, bringing all the booty to light.

With their long, fearsome iron teeth they gnaw every

Handiwork, so that nothing withstands them.

Medicine, moreover, cannot restore to life

What their venom may infect with a bite.

Their bite is fatal; scorpions do no worse harm;

Where they come, their companion death comes too.

     Lo! grey foxes determine to leave their woodsy

Dens, and approach the city’s wealthy homes.                        480

Night-time thefts that are most often done furtively,

Broad daylight then makes manifestly plain.

Henceforth they don't value sheep nor a poor sheepfold,

Nor does chicken or lamb please them as prey,

But those things in the city of greater value

They seize, nor can any law restrain them.

The servile fox, who dwelt beneath the ground, ascends

Into halls and seeks lodging everywhere.

Foxes, who were previously dogs’ enemies,

Make peace treaties by mutual accord.                            490

Becoming wolves, they swiftly follow their prey’s tracks,

Who were normally more timid than lambs.

     The cat also joins with them, and, leaving the barns,

This clown gets into forbidden mischief.

Henceforth the cat declines to prey upon the mice;

Its nature does not care to keep its ways.

Who is by right supposed to drive pests from houses,

Is then pesky and brings pests to houses.

The mice who once entered the city of Ekron,

Where God's ark was, did not cause such distress.                     500

Madness did not so terrify the Ekronites,

Nor was there such a protection this time.

Nay, the awful fury I saw in these monsters

Grieved and terrified the citizens more.

Chapter 7 

     Here he says that he saw in his dream a sixth mob of rabble turned into domestic fowl, mingled among which he says there were owls, that is, robbers.

     It was a wonder to me when I saw such things,

And my mind’s shock rushes to my heart’s depths.

There was not among the beasts any creature made,

Of those born to servile circumstances,

But that I saw each sort amongst those in the fields,

And their mingling side by side was threatening.                  510

Among ridges, hills, and out of the way places,

Every flock has escaped from burst stables.

The occupant of each kind of villeinage comes,

Sprouted more thickly than plants from the soil.

When, fearful, I turned my eyes now here and now there,

Espying all these marvels in their turn,

Lo! there came a mob of transformed domestic fowl,

The leaders of which were cock and gander.

They who were wont to stay at home and tread the dung,

Presumed to usurp the rights of eagles.                                  520

The rooster took on the falcon’s beak and talons;

The gander would touch the stars with his wings.

Thus, when law is exiled, lofty matters succumb

To base causes, and worthy yield to vile.

Wherever the animals couldn’t gain entrance

The birds flew above all to take the prey.

     Suddenly I saw that the gander's and the cock’s

Colors had changed, and they'd taken on new forms.

New plumage from the black raven transformed the cock,

And the gander behold! turned to a kite.                                530

They not only took on plumage foreign to them,

But the same manner of behavior, too.

Whom nature had formerly fed at granaries,

Satisfied with little, folly changes.

For they demand that they might eat the fat corpses

Of human bodies, which alone please them.

They who dutifully waited to be summoned,

Awaited a hand to scatter their meal,

Behold! more fierce and rapacious than the falcons,

Thrust themselves forward to snatch prey by force.              540

     The cock, who used to sing in the night, so that all

Were accustomed to joy in hearing him,

Crows hellishly, and the horrid sound of his mouth’s

Terrible voice surpasses the thunder.

And fierce Coppa, following afoot, urges on

Her cock to every evil she thinks up.

She does by her chatter what she can’t do by deeds, 

Herself stirs a thousand to base malice.

And the gander abandons the goose that he treads,

And everywhere he huffs at some new prey.                     550

The gander who once, in his natural state, frightened

Nobody but children with his weak hiss,

Now horrifies adults with his terrible sound,

And tries to slash the bolder sort apart.

     And the wrath of the birds that once spurned the owls

Ceases, and now there is love between them.

They determine the day is lawful for those whom

Night’s dark shadow had granted furtive ways.

The owl flies from confinement as the birds’ comrade,

And joins up with them freely in the fields.                           560

There’d been a time owls folded feathers together,

To safely capture their prey through the air.

However, this feathered rabble was using iron

To whet its pinions, from which men could die.                           

Chapter 8 

     Here he says that he saw in his dream a seventh mob of rabble changed into flies and frogs.

     Uninterrupted slumber continued my dreams,

And granted me many more things to see.

That the monsters’ madness be more fully replete,

And that evil’s wicked troop be increased,

Lo! there comes every kind of flies, which swear to pierce

With stings and bites every healthy being.                             570

Lo! the wasps return that tortured Vespasian

Formerly, and cause anew misfortunes.

Then so great a raging horrid host of flies rose,

That scarcely a man could hide from their bite.

As hell rages, they drive the grieving here and there,

Biting all things, inflicting injury.

     The frog, companion of the fly, besets many;

One flies to crime, the other hops behind.

The mob of farmers Latona had turned to frogs

Returns, and contrives ills with new furor.                            580

The revenge of the strange frogs was very terrible;

In every house they did no little harm.

The frogs ate up all the food and all the fodder,

And everywhere they spewed their vile poison.

These were the frogs barren Egypt had formerly

Abhorred, and they caused just as much damage.

Not a wise man on earth was left unharmed by them;

Philosophers lament the wounds they took.

The frog is bad, but the fly worse, whose violence

Spreads and disturbs every place everywhere.                                590

O grave punishment, than which none graver happened

Before, from which decent men suffered more!

     The noxious fly of Egypt was not more horrid,

Nor did it terrify freeborn men more.

Yea, these flying furies searched out every chamber,

And dealt out injuries to upright men.

However, they harmed nothing base, but sought to hurt

Those whom on earth freeborn status honored.

Thus like to like, a villein mob abets other

Villeins, so that malice joins with malice.                            600

The flies assemble, the wasps form into a ball,

They confound the air with their wickedness.

The fierce horsefly is there, and gnats, houseflies, beetles;

The locust, since he bites, is their comrade. 

Wandering lawless, they fly into towns and villes,

And there were no nets to impede their way.

There was no meat-preserving pot without its fly,

Nor jar so shut a slight crack didn't show,

That Prince Beelzebub, arriving, could get in, 

And his army of flies along with him.                             610

The torment from the various kinds of flies varied

Then, who conferred injuries of diverse sorts.

This one struck, that one stuck, one bit, another stung,

One hopped up and wounded with its poniard.

     A grave plague the fly, than which nothing more harmful

Ever lived, or scourge more vicious on earth.

There was so much madness and frenzy on that day,

That no one could be safe in any place.

Flies suddenly become active from too much heat,

Which hoarfrost previously suppressed with cold.                620

Thus summer’s heat in a sudden frenzy scattered

Through the fields what brief winter had restrained.

O what a wonder, when wandering locusts claimed

The labors of the ant belonged to them!

O what a wonder, when the fly raged everywhere

For its prey, more a raptor than the hawk!

O what a wonder, when the filthy fly assumed

The peacock’s disdain with its proud feathers!

O what a wonder, when the fly with its small wings

Would speed more swiftly than the lark with its!                       630

O what a wonder, when the feeble fly would try

To outdo the crane in its might and flight!

O what a wonder, when the fly rules the lofty

Eagle, and aspires to take its place!

     This was that day when beastly flies that had fangs came

Forth, which plagued the earth with their pestilence.

This was that day Fortune was not of any help;

There was no place flies could not get into.

This was that day the warhorse succumbs to the ass,

And in defeat was without its honor.                                         640

This was that day when the fierce hearts of the lions

Were cowed in fear, pressed by the oxen’s strength.

This was that day the foul pig contaminated

All the neat and tidy fields with its filth.

This was that day when the dog becomes stronger than

The bear, and leopards could not face the cat.

This was that day when the swift wolf wandered freely

Everywhere amidst the fields for its prey.

     This was that day when everywhere the weak frightened

The strong; the low, the high; the small, the great.                650

This was that day when suddenly the mighty oak

Falls, knocked down easily by a modest Straw.

This was that day on which the fragile roofing Tyle

Overcomes the strong marble with its strength.

Behold the day a Straw was binding his own straws,

Who thought that the grain was without value!

This was that day on which, when freedom was grieving,

The villein rejoiced in his villainy.

This was that day which took the serfs onto the heights,

And cast down leaders not allowed as peers.             660

This day was the harsh stepmother of the virtues,

And the mother of all the world’s evil.

This was that day which every wise man in the world

Wished had passed by without having happened.

     This was that day when everyone feared that God’s wrath

Was made manifest because of his sins.

This was throughout the earth that unique awful day,

Full, as it were, of the fear of judgment.

This was that day about which, if we speak truly,

No chronicle before had told the like.                                    670

Alas how awful! Alas how sad and bitter!

How confounded was that day with evil!

May heaven’s vengeance, grave and swift and manifest,

Devastate those through whom that day thus raged.

May that day delay, return never in our time,

May there be no reason it ever would.

If there is anything we should ask of this day,

I beg that it not return to this place.

Chapter 9 

     Here he says that in his dream he saw, when all the abovesaid furies had gathered together, that a certain grackle, in English a jay, which is commonly called Wat,

presumed the status of governor of the others, and in truth this Wat was their leader.

     When such a host of marvels, in manner fierce beasts,

Had joined as one, like the sands of the sea,                                      680

There was a scrub jay, taught in the craft of speaking,

Whom no cage had been able to keep home.

Here, spreading his wings while all looked on, he maintained,

Though unworthy, that his was the chief role.

Just as the devil led the legions from the pit,

So this wicked man led the wicked mob.

A fierce voice, wild face, the very image of death,

These were the features of his appearance.

He silenced their mutterings; they all fell silent,

That the sound of his voice be better heard.                           690

He climbed atop a tree, and said to his compeers

These words with a voice from his gaping maw.

“O servile race of wretches, whom the world long past

Subjugated to itself by its law.

Behold! The day has come when the villeins rise up,

Force the freeborn to give up their places.

Down with preferment! Down with law! Let no powers

Which once existed endure in the world.

Let that law cease that was wont to subjugate us

By right, and let our court from now on rule.”                       700

     The mob falls silent, and ponders the speaker’s words,

Pleased by the manifesto from his mouth.

The rabble lent his treacherous words their deceived

Ear, and did not see what the end would be. 

For when he had been elevated by the plebs,

He drew the entire land unto himself.

Now, since the plebs unwisely bowed their necks to him,

He calls the people here and takes command.

As the tide is often suppressed by a high wind,

And as a wave swells from a whirlwind’s blast,                    710

So the scrub jay sways the others by his voice’s

Fervor, incites the people’s mind to arms.

The foolish people do not know what their court is,

But what he orders has the law of force.

He said, “Strike, slay, unleash wrong,” and someone strikes, slays,

Wrongs, and no one speaks out against killing.

All those whom that Fury summons prick up their ears,

Listen, and, drawn to the voice, throng the road.

Thus many poor men, urged by the prompting Fury,

Often put their hand into the fire then.                                   720

“Let it be so,” they all proclaim in a loud voice;

That sound was like the roar of the ocean.

Taken aback by the huge racket of their voice,

I could henceforth scarce keep my trembling feet;

Nevertheless, I saw from afar how they made

Their mutual compact by clasping hands.

They said that the peasant mob would destroy on earth

Whatever of the freeborn sort exists.

     When this was said, they all walked together as peers,

And hell’s wicked commander led their way.                       730

A black cloud that was stirred up by hell’s furies comes,

Which rains down, pours in their hearts, every sin.

And thus the earth became wet with the dew of hell,

That from this time forth no virtue could grow.

But every vice that a faultless man shrinks back from

Grows, and from that time forth it fills their hearts.

By then the noonday devil had made his approach,

And on a sad day spinning arrows fly.

Satan released is there himself and likewise all 

The errant multitude of paupered hell.                                   740

Behold! ignorant hearts have lost their sense of shame,

And feel no fear of crime or punishment. 

When I saw Erebus’s leaders led the world,

Heaven-given rights were of no avail.

The more I saw them, the more fearsome I thought them,

Unaware what the end would have to be.

Chapter 10 

     Here he says he saw in his dream that the cursed progeny of Cain had joined with the aforesaid, together with a multitude of the servants of King Ulysses of old, whom Circe changed into beasts. 

     The heat was great, the madness fierce, the mob immense,

When the Inferno raged as one with earth.

Like sea sand was the foul council of the monsters,

Pouring from everywhere, without number.                          750

That offspring of the demon’s lineage was enraged,

Rendered horrid to men, rebel to God,

Scornful of authority, savage for slaughter,

As is the wolf which famished rends the sheep.

At once every abounding sin of the worst sort

Erupted, and the air poisoned good men.

     The seven generations Cain himself begot

Are numbered there with their comrade furies.

Dreadful, foul, quick to do bad and slow to do right,

Each does in his own way the very worst.                             760

A depraved creation ignores approaching doom;

Everything they do they share equally.

Always loving sin, they were the agents of ruin,

And rage like butchers hell-bent on slaughter.

Isaiah, Isidore, Revelations all tell,

And mighty Sybil mentions in her books,

That Gog and Magog was said to be their surname,

Among whose sorcery is every sin.

These furies do not know what king or law might be;

They are restrained by no rule or order.                                 770

They fear no men, nor, bowing, worship any gods,

But do that which the world holds most shameful.

This filthy tribe is wont to feed on human flesh,

And feral life gives them their meat market.

The dark species has many shameful practices,

Which sets the wicked mob bad examples.

This raging madness consequently joins as one

Those raging furies I mentioned before.

Ulysses’ comrades, that Circe turned into swine,

Have also come and are joined up with them.                        780

Now they wore the faces of men, now the transformed

Heads of beasts that are devoid of reason.

Chapter 11 

     Here he says, according to the vision of his dream, how he heard their diverse names and horrid voices. He also tells of John Ball, who goaded them on to every

wickedness and was regarded among them as a prophet.

     Wat summons, Tom comes to him, nor does Simm hold back,

At the same time Bet and Gibb bade Heck come.

Colle rages, whom Geoff helps to make mischief ready,

Will vows to go with them on a rampage.

Greg steals while Dave distracts, their companion is Hobb,

Lorkin thinks to be no less in their midst.

Hud smites those Jud strikes, all the while Tebb threatens them,

Jack pulls down homes and kills men with his sword.             790

Hogg shows off his strut, because he thinks he’s become

Greater than the king in nobility.

Their prophet Ball teaches, whom a malign spirit 

Has taught, and he was then their highest school.

As many madmen as I’ve recognized by name,

There were still, as I recall, some others.

They shout out often in portentous deep voices,

Making their noises in their different ways.

     Some bray in the beastly manner of the donkeys;

Some bellow out the lowing of oxen;                                             800

Some issue the horrible grunting of the pigs

Forth, and shake all the earth with their rumble.

The foaming wild boar gnashes, and makes huge uproars,

The croft boar grunts, too, and adds his racket.

The fierce barking whipped up the winds in the city,

As the harsh voice of the raging dogs flies.

The hungry fox wails, and the sly wolf howls on high

As well, and summons together his like.

Nor does the cackling gander beat with lesser sound

Ears that shudder, pierced by a sudden pain.                            810

The wasps are abuzz and their sound is horrendous,

No one is able to number the swarm.

They roar together in the manner of maned lions,

And all that was bad before becomes worse.

Lo! the boorish racket, the loud din, the foul brawl,

Such fearsome sound was never heard before.

Rocks resound with the uproar, air bounces the sound,

And Echo takes the noise and sends it back. 

The fierce noise frightens nearby places with its din,

Where all fear that an evil fortune comes.                             820

The perversity of this time had touched many,

And many more were stunned by the monsters.

At the storm’s front, the jay, before whose name the earth

Trembled, struck terror in all the bigwigs.

Rumor flew forth and leaders were busy with talk,

But there was no wise counsel from the wise.

The unheard of situation weighs on stunned ears,

And in the mind by ear stark fear arrives.

They try to doctor it, but the wound is deadly,

And there’s no cure without a doctor’s hand.                        830

Chapter 12 

     Here he tells, according to the vision of his dream, how the abovementioned madmen appointed heralds and tribunes among themselves, and how their old and young were armed.

     Amongst them they establish heralds and tribunes,

And order that their will should be the law.

By herald’s voice they proclaim this their law, that all

Houses be burnt down that speak against them.

Their own wicked that don’t support their wickedness

Shall be beheaded, and their homes burned down.

They name those who aid and abet their crime and rage,

Upon whose hands that work should then depend.

And that’s why I saw so much damage inflicted,

When their herald shouts in their fool's forum.                   840

This peasant intoned, a building was set on fire,

Sound exploded, and the house was aflame.

     This raging peasantry decreed that all who could,

Both young and old, were required to bear arms.

Those who are elderly carry ancient fence posts, 

Or poles, rather than be without something.

Worn by their advanced age, they crutched their limbs with sticks,

Those whom a cough marked in passing, like sheep.

Here comes a peasant with a quiver upside-down,

Here broken bows, here a torch without light;                       850

Whoever bore a distaff thought that he was armed,

So even old men, feeble, rage in arms.

     But those among the peasants whom youthful years drive,

Bear whatever crude tools there are to hand.

They carry axes and scythes rotted out with dark

Rust, which slash necks wide open with their edge.

Half a sheath barely covers the sword one peasant

Carries, and with which he smites the freeborn.

A spade turns into a sword, a stick is shaken

Like a spear, and there’s a hatchet handy.                              860

Many a bow is retorted by smoke and age,

And many a shaft flies without feathers.

Hayfork and shovel are carried as if lances,

And an iron maul is borne as a sword.

Some peasant had said, “These are suitable for our

Shoulders,” and having muttered went his way.

So the youngsters cavort like puppies through the fields,

And think that they’re more agile than the beasts.

The sling was there to hand as well, and smoother stones, 

With which peasants have behaved threateningly.                 870

When there is nothing else, in their ferocity

Some carry clods and branches torn from trees.

Some part bear rocks, nor did some lack spears in their rage,

And with deadly intent they wage fierce war.

They say this ignorant progeny drenched the land

Profusely with the blood of wiser men.

Step by step they made their way with a steady pace,

Where will alone, not reason, bade them go.

Chapter 13 

     Here he tells, according to the vision of his dream, how and when the aforementioned madmen, goaded on by the devil, entered New Troy, that is, the city of London. For just as Troy was once laid waste, so this city at that time was left forsaken, deprived of all consolation, to its utter shameful sorrow.

     Then on my right hand I thought that I recognized

New Troy, which looked like a widow in shock.                   880

Once encircled by its walls, it now lay open,

Bolts in the city gate left unseated.

A thousand wolves advancing, and amongst them bears,

Decide to leave the woods for city homes.

There was no monstrosity or lineage sprung up

On the estates, whose rage could grieve the earth,

But that it came and grew, like the rain from the south,

Every kind of madness from every side.

Then those appear in plain, wide open places who

Lurked before, and were greeted by their peers.                    890

A huge ferocious beast has left the wood and marsh,

Raging more from hunger than with madness.

Yet it rages then from madness in the waste town,

Which reels that such unheard of evil comes.

A rage afield vows in the woods that, laws cast out,

They’ll cast down rights with united fury.

The number of perdition’s slaves is so great there

That scarcely any dam can contain them.

     When fury drives a task, there will be no restraint,

For it plunges into all things proscribed.                                900

They hasten of their own accord, stop for nothing,

So no one can impede the way they take.

We hand over all, open wide our doors to foes,

And put our trust in faithless betrayal.

As a keen horse neighs, prances to the ringing brass,

Warlike, unaware that evil draws nigh,

So the savage peasantry, heedless of perils

Begins, and fails to see what end will come.

The serfs’ council, which is gripped by every fury,

Seeks to clasp triumphant hands with others.                        910

So the rustic mobs draw furiously nigh the town,

And like the sea’s flood tide they enter it.  

O what a great event and notable wonder

Occurred upon the entry of this threat!

Grand palatial halls in the city are transformed,

And altered altogether into huts.

And the basest huts suddenly become the halls

By Chance, turned now in judgment most unsound.

     Lo! it was Thursday, the feast of Corpus Christi,                         

When madness girt the city’s every side.                               920      

One peasant ringleader at the forefront eggs on

The others, urging them to follow him.

Aided by many men, he tramples the city,

Strikes down the citizens and burns their homes.

He did not screech alone, but drew thousands with him,

And involved many thousands in his crime.

His words rally their rage and, savage for slaughter,

He shouts “Burn, Kill,” in the ears of the crowd.

What had been a safe way rages, roaring with fires,

And there's no passage to the long castle.                          930

And the Baptist’s house, bereft its spouse, to the sword

Falls, and soon turns into fiery ashes;

Sacred temples flared with the fires of wickedness,

And impious was mixed with pious flame.

Stunned ministers, with hearts atremble, were weeping,

And fear had snatched the strength from their bodies.

     He whose terrible right hand hurls fierce thunderbolts,

Commands that the sky torment earth with fire.

If some house survives and is able to fight off

Peril unscathed, it makes God pious vows.                   940

I need not ask if the raging rabble longs for

The city’s wealth, and loots during that time.

As many ants are wont to take in a thin line

The grain they light upon to earthen barns,

So the swarm of madmen haul their loot through the town,

And no one could reckon up their number.

One held, one yanked, one rested, another ransacked,

And many hands quickly gathered their loot.

However, Bacchus, getting to them, soaks their guts

In wine, and that brought Thursday to an end.                       950

Night fell, their eyes and minds were aswim in the wines;

Limbs twitched, but feet didn’t go anywhere.

     After Aurora put the starry fires to flight,

Lo! waxing grief now prepared fresh insult.

If Jove’s violent wrath had harmed before, Venus                             

Then moved by her fury does twice as much.                                    

The madmen dash about, like lightning from the south;

Where they come, woe and alas! they have peers.

Then in accord wolf, dog, and bear hunt together

In the city, where they have made their lairs.                         960

Behold that old Calchas, whose wisdom was greater

Than everybody’s, didn’t know what to do.

Antenor could not then broker alliances

By peace treaties, for rage dissolves his work.

No space separates a righteous man from a fool;

Thersites’ heart is just like Diomede’s.

The words composed for eloquent Ulysses’ tongue

Fell flat, nor was his delivery inspired.

And since Fate seems to resist so many efforts,

Everyone hands the reins over to Chance.                              970

Arms don’t do much good, neither spear nor use of horse,

And good old-fashioned bravery is gone.

As a raging lioness, leaving her nursing cub,

Falls upon the cattle nearest to her,

So peasant beasts, leaving the salutary law,

Fall fiercely upon the foremost families.

The calamity befell everyone alike, 

But it did not ruin everyone the same.

     O the decadent nature of our first city,

You who let the mob’s madmen take up arms!                    980

O how backward matters are, when the wretched knight

Quakes and feral rabble have time for arms!

The battles of Thebes, of Carthage, and Rome itself

Were not filled with more fury than were these.

Capaneus did not prevail, nor Tydeus;

Neither one of them launched a fierce attack.

Palamedes did not prevail, nor brave Ajax,

And Agamemnon’s sword was not in charge.

Victorious Troy fell, lay vanquished in defeat,

Like a lamb to a wolf, Troy became prey.                             990

The villeins attacked, the city’s knights did not fight;

Troy lacked Hector, and Argos, Achilles.

Hector’s or Troilus’ boldness did not conquer then,

But, conquered, they submitted cravenly;

Priam did not bask in his accustomed honor;

Though lord, he suffered what the serfs dealt him.

Hecuba’s chambers then could have scarce any peace,

For sorrow stirred the fearful hearts in them.

Nor could Ilion then, within its high towers,

Protect anyone against the madmen.                              1000

Chapter 14 

     Here he tells figuratively, according to the vision of his dream, about the death of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

     O! High Priest Helenus dies, cut down by the sword,

Who saved the Palladium from Troy’s altar.

At first he pleads that his life should be granted him,

But fails to stir cruel hearts for the better.

What he says is enough if grace could touch their ears,

But they don’t think his words have any weight.

What he said on his own behalf ran out their ears,

And inclined the mob more to villainy.

A mutter sounds, is raised at once to a mighty

Uproar, and it is full of sedition.                                            1010

The vicious plebs bring men of virtue to trial,

And a filthy mob crowds the sacred court. 

Faith wages war with fraud, Virtue with Villainy,

Wickedness with Duty, Rage with Reason.

Impiety, the guest, gets no gentle inputs

From its heart; Love leaves its mind, an exile.

     God knows that these wild men are worthy hell’s endless

Fires, and wicked men vagrant from reason.

O the sorrow in deeds, O sorrow’s wicked deeds! 

These are the evil deeds of hell, not man.                              1020

This was not human wickedness, since the devil

Brought such a vicious deed from hell to earth.

The plebs, forsaking the love of Christ, rage so wild

Since the crude mob denies God the father. [1]

[1] SCHG have alternate lines 1019-23, written over erasure. TH2 have the alternate lines with a different l. 1021 (The highest demon rules them, not Holy Spirit).

Not prickly bramble, but shining olive, lovely

Fig, and coaxing vine incur their hatred.                                1020*

The Highest Lord doesn’t rule them, nor Holy Spirit,

Neither the law nor Christ then governs them,

Because they do not hold their Maker in esteem,

Here Virtue retreats, the host of Vice advances,

One leaves its place, the other seizes it.

Goodness falls, Pity perishes, all Decency

Goes into exile, and Good takes to flight.

Here Love and Rest, Peace and Harmony of the Mind,

And Hope and Faith abandon their mansions.                       1030

Both Temperance’s kindly manner and modest

Sense of Shame have built their homes far away.

Patience has conveyed itself to a better seat,

And its comrade, Humility, follows.

The Virtues’ troop dispersed, a cruel plebs rises                          

Against Simon, pitiless hand, fierce mob.

     And when a powerful assembly had gathered,

A large crowd rushed to this mortal contest.

At once from afar, some of those who stood aside,

Awaiting the end of the matter, shout,                            1040

“The death sentence applies, let him be put to death,

Let his blood be upon us for all time.”

Words were also spoken against this opinion,

But the foolish common voice condemned him.

His foes rush forth and violate the Lord’s altars,

Surrounding on all sides the prelate’s death.

Without any pity, merciless butchers shout,

“He shall be done away with by our hands.”

Grabbing him, they severed his neck with a halberd;

No belief there reveres the laws of Christ.                            1050

But he endured all their outrage submissively,

And, while he suffered greatly, was composed.

The curse of Christ, so earned, will not forget the ones

Who so treat the head whose members they are.

     Four confederates conspired in Thomas’s death,

A hundred thousand delivered Simon’s.

A king whose heart was moved grieved for Thomas’ life,

And a king grieved the last day of Simon’s.

A king’s wrath was the death of Thomas, but the rage

Of a whole mob was the cause of Simon’s.                           1060

An unlike cause there was, yet one death for the two,

And each righteous man suffered unjustly. 

His neck unharmed by the swords, the one’s head perished,

Which God’s altar received and accepted.

With his head left intact, the other’s neck took blows,

Whose passion occurred in an open square.

A knight was chiefly guilty of Thomas’ blood,

A peasant furnished arms for Simon’s death.

Leaders who were not in awe of the Church of Christ 

Were the cause of the martyr Thomas’ death.                        1070

A villainous sort opposing the realm’s justice

Brought Simon’s final day in the city.

Thomas fell by the sword in the mother’s bosom,

And Simon in a mob of his children.

A king could have saved Thomas, but regal power

Lacked the might to save the life of Simon.

The death of Thomas was avenged, and now vengeance

For Simon’s death looms daily at the gates.

     The sun at its highest now made meager shadows;

At mid-day the ephod was soaked in blood.                          1080

Thus an innocent victim, the axe at his neck,

Suffering, pulses the earth with purple blood.

The father of the soul is bereft his body,

The shepherd leaves the fields, slain by his flock.

The guardian of the soul was left without a guard;

The children whom the father rears kill him.

The crozier bearer, first among priests by office,

Was here forsaken and hung on the cross.

The doctor of the laws perishes without law,

And the jaws of the flock grind their shepherd.                     1090

He dies before his time, without sins or reason,

He whom both Nature and God alike grieve.

Though subjugated by the false law of the serfs,

He walks, a freeborn man, eternal ways.

Though he fell physically, his manly courage

Restores him spiritually to God.

His temperateness, whatever rage did outside,

Endured within him in his innocence.

Though his wisdom is reft from the world, his virtue

Gains a place in heaven with the Wise One.                     1100

Although justice seems cast down, by it he ascends 

To the stars and abides with God on high.

They have brought to life the one whom they thought to kill;

They took him from the world, but not from God.

     O who knew, in times gone by, such wicked events,

As are mirrored in the prelate’s murder?

He’d served the commons before, through many good deeds,

And the mob gladly hates him in return.

In all his years, Nestor did not know such evil,

Which, because rare, is even more striking.                           1110

But acts that occurred formerly don’t weigh on me 

As heavily as those seen at present.

For the disaster I saw happen in my time

Resulted in more grievous frightful acts.

O the consequence of sin perpetuated,

The mob’s course of conduct these days teaches!

I believe them worse than Cain, who only killed his

Brother, for that one had been their father.

I do not know who deserves praise for such a deed;

I do know fallen Troy allowed such crime.                            1120

What one does, another aids, and another nods,

So that bad and worse could become the worst.

The man who commits a crime and his accomplice,

The law requires, should be tried as equals.

O you city who dares stone prophets entrusted

You, there’s reason enough that you should grieve!

But the rustic madmen of the plebs above all

Begot this crime when they first did mischief.

O the cursed hand of him who struck off the head!

His sin frightful, his torment eternal!                                     1130

O you who’ve committed such a crime God forbade,

Traitor, what pain, what death do you merit?

O the insane fury, rustic folk, violent plebs;

Your wicked plot is beyond all wickedness!

Say with what impudence you accomplish such crimes;

No one’s equaled your guile and treachery. 

     Hie hither old men, flock here you flowering youth,

Behold what arms the wicked peasant bore.

Beat your breast, pour out your tears, bewail the dead man  

Whose incredible death is here set forth.                               1140

Like a serpent whose tail writhes when it’s beheaded,

He who had been our head spasmed and died.

A furious death took place at the sacred altars,

The prelate’s honor thought less than the flock’s.

Take heed, you who are yet to come, and let this time’s

Incredible case instruct all the earth.

Let those who tend the Church beware by this instance,

Lest earth usurp divine office right now.

What Cassandra like a prophet used to predict,

Came true in the city to grave effect.                                     1150

God’s nurturing hand allowed evils to happen,

But God alone knows what his reason was.

All were stunned by such an unwarranted demise,

At least those whom reason drew to God’s love.

Priam was unable to save Helenus, for

At that time the king’s regnal laws fell still.

But when, in time’s course, the king learned what had happened,

He lamented and grieved with his heart’s love.

The king grieved for the deed, but could not impair fate,

Nor bring to Holy Church its justice due.                              1160

I saw the bodies thrown before the sacred gates;

There was no place free of iniquity.

Chapter 15 

     Here he describes further, according to the vision of his dream, the different persecutions and murders that the aforementioned madmen committed in the said city, which was at the time, alas! almost defenseless, and how the news of this sort of thing terrified neighboring cities.

     The citizens who were prominent at that time

Fell by the hand of death, laid out like sheep.

Corpses dispatched by death were never carried off,

But everywhere lay strewn about the streets.

And so no relics should remain for men, the mob

Trampled the dead bodies, rent limb from limb.

The corpses of the dead rested hung upon walls,

And brutes, like brutes, denied them sepulture.                     1170

That was a grim blow, when the earth was soaked in blood,

And where a spring bubbled, blood made it red.

Death rages at the door, pounds on the gates of law,

And the peasant himself rules life or death. 

Whatsoever was strong succumbs beneath their hands;

The highest city falls, buried in gore.

They waste the food they find in towers overthrown,

And wreck the better things they recognize.

     There was new woe, lament, and overwhelming grief;

The wicked refuse to honor the king.                                    1180

Old men, whom age had guided through a hundred years,

Wept for the calamity one day brought.

More than fish want water, the madmen desire blood,

Nor does it help to beg mercy and peace.

If a father spoke beseeching words for his son,

He fell, both alike at a word hewn down.

If you sought mercy, and wept the sea’s waves for it,

Those tears would not have carried any weight.

Then the mob burns with ungovernable anger;

No prayers succeed in restoring pity.                                     1190

When prayers are spent, the raging peasant becomes more 

Violent, and does the worst he can.

No boar amidst the woods, so savage in his wrath,

Tossed with his foaming jaws the coursing dogs.

Before you could have said one word to the madmen,

You’d have found your head severed by their tools.

     Confounded by the terror of sudden collapse,

The freeborn class scarcely knows its own class.

The freeman flees and wanders, but finds no safe place,

Neither city ramparts nor forest lairs.                                     1200

Seeking safety, he draws nigh a thousand houses,

But in no place can he find peace and quiet.

Now here, now there, like a rain cloud in his movements,

The freeman goes, but nowhere is he safe.

Men sleep in holes and choose the pits of Avernus,

Rather than perish if they can but hide.

But the woods fear the woods and the fields fear the fields,

Town fears town, and nothing knows what is what.

How sudden those furies, the actions of which God

Abhorred, spattered the set table with blood!                            1210

They drenched with drops of blood the food strewn everywhere;

No room or bed chamber was safe for men.

Then nothing, unless in the pit or in the sky,

Could be secure by virtue of its place.

Every foreigner was their prey, smashed in the mouth 

By peasants attacking with biting swords. 

O the sorrow in the wife when she sees death’s sword,

By which her man would fall, although guiltless!

He holds her in his arms, dries her tears with kisses;

“Let us seek heaven’s heights,” she says, “as one.”               1220

The flowing locks spread on her neck absorbed her tears,

And her lips quivered with her trembling sobs.

Thus I often saw, with grieving heart, women’s cheeks

Grow wet when they were bereft of their men. 

They often wrung their hands, and often tore their hair,

And with their nails they slashed at their own skin.

But he who was the author of such savagery

Rejoiced at their grief, and would add to it.

Thus did these monstrous men cold-bloodedly rejoice;

Merciless, they were devoid of pity.                                         1230

     Reports, drifting through the uncertain towns, broadcast 

Rumor’s murmur, and caused stout hearts to quake.

The public carnage with its grave outcome is told,

And no one knows whom fortune will fell next.

Thus the merciless sword, whose hand no golden gifts

Could then buy off, lo! terrifies men more.

A bitter thirst besets and twists men’s burning guts,

While fear dries up the chambers of their hearts.

The undefeated man whom no one before could

Conquer, was conquered then by grievous fear.                    1240

The blood, like rain, and the earth tinted red by blood

Disconcert still more the bold man’s courage.

But there's no potion at hand to cure his disease,

Nor does someone hasten to his rescue.

No one conjures up help in his bitter distress;

Each one thinks his death hangs in the balance.

The leaders’ hands are still, do not oppose the day’s

Wrath, but meekly accept every evil.

The strength of no powerful man was then secure;

Nay, the wicked tail oppressed its own head.                        1250

Then the house of every man seems to be mourning,

Nor was any man safe from death’s cancer.

     He dipped his lofted blades in a great deal of blood,

The country peasant, when he took to arms.

Merciless, he will spare neither boys nor women,

Wastes property, farms, rights, markets of all.

No one gets mercy beneath his ferocity;

His onslaught terrifies the whole country.

For all the mob of rabble favored the madmen,

Nor was there one freeborn that opposed them.                     1260

There was not in the whole kingdom one lance or sword

In a knight’s hands, with which he’d do his work.

When the fury grew, when the peasant mob swelled up,

The knight that wavered then became quite meek. 

The meek gentry yielded and gave way before wrath,

And the villainous ground down the upright.

The foot takes the mind’s place and error has the law’s;

No doctor has a cure for the disease.

Thus neither the shield nor lance of nobility

Avails to uphold their ancient honor;                                       1270

Hollow justice ceases and no longer maintains

Due rights in an untamed savage’s heart. 

     Time does not grant any remedies for fury,

For drunkenness rushes to every crime.

Who might wish to reproach these evils, but couldn’t,

Poured forth their tears in token of their thoughts.

From the bottom of his heart, everyone fetched up

His tears, and waited for his end to come.

Eyes that were dry before, and filled with gay laughter,

Burst out in tears that flowed just like water.                         1280

Who were before used to weep on no occasion,

Have instructed their eyes that they should flow;

Grandfathers wept, sisters wept, and their brothers wept;

Their eyes saw nothing but the grief they bore.

“Alas, oh woe,” they said, everything full of grief,

Everything full of the worry of fear.

Someone, weeping, exclaims, “How will this end for me?”

No one knows at daybreak what night will bring.

“Help us I pray,” one says, “and free us from our fear;

Remove our wretched fate, O God!” he says.                        1290

The peasant tells the freeborn, “Great power is ours,”

He said, “and your privilege has now ended.”

O class appalled by death’s chilling apparition,

How fickle Chance has brought you such evil!

The reason is laid up in the storehouse of God,

Why such a great storm struck down freeborn men.

     Peace and quiet perished, because lowly creatures

Waged shattering wars with a fierce spirit.

I saw those seek prey themselves who before had been

The prey, but no prey could stand against them.                    1300

For I saw that the smallest cubs drove off the lion,

And that the leopard could find no safe place.

The flock of sheep point their sharp horns at the shepherd,

And they’re soaked in red blood spilled from his heart.

When they put aside Christ’s faith, and when they rampaged,

They thought the church and the whorehouse the same.

The treasonous folly of the time then denied

All that God or Nature themselves required.

It did not fear God nor reverence the world’s rights,

But declared every wicked crime legal.                                 1310

Thus any semblance of order turned upside down,

And no estate knew what status it had.

     The thistle grew higher than the spikes of the grain,

The weed devastated and spoiled the fields.

Lot is captured, the shepherd seized, the farm pillaged,

And He Who Sees All lets the world go blind.

Then the saintly are punished for the people’s sins,

And this madness holds what's sacred wicked.

These sinful men deserve to be demons’ subjects,

Since they did not fear either man or God.                            1320

Deserving of their grief, the wicked plebs mutter,

And cause much dissent among the people.

Presuming the rights of priests, and usurping their

Offices, they incurred the wrath of God.                      

The fury of this plague blitzed indoors like a storm;

Outside, the fearsome mob thundered with roars.

The madmen shout as one, the mournful earth answers;

Alas, that such ills happen in this time!

No happy face is then seen upon the city;

Its visage reflects its heart’s bitterness.                                  1330

There is no quiet for its troubled mind, and no

Aid comes, so it can be restored to health.

     Thus the Trojan’s ancient love is changed to anger,

And song, suppressed by dirge, stills everywhere.

Laughter has turned into tears, all honor into

Disgrace, and what sufficed before now fails.

Tears bathe faces, and the heart shudders with alarm;

Grief swallows all that had been happiness.

You would have seen some weep and lie upon the ground,

Battered by their own and others’ sorrows,                            1340

And many times they stretch their arms up to heaven,

As if there's a cure for evil on high.

Who had been good is tormented for his goodness;

Lament abounds, fresh sorrow everywhere.

“We have lost everything,” they say, for in the town

No one gets the respect his rank expects.

The wise men of the law who flourished in those days

Lost their heads when the sword was put to them.

And those whom the madmen considered the lawyers,

They felled with like blows, slashing their bodies.                1350

Blame flew shrieking and horrified their fearful ears;

A wise man didn’t know what rights he had.

Every crime blossomed, goodness withered, the law fell

Ill, and the king lacked wherewithal to rule.

Insane cruelty, which no one had seen before,

Caused these and more bizarre evils in town.

This fury trampled our fatherland under foot,

Not only in cities but everywhere.

Chapter 16 

     Here he laments as if in his own person, according to the vision of his dream, the sorrows of those who saved themselves by hiding in the woods and caves for fear of those times.

     So when I saw these things, ghastly horror gripped me,

And it seemed to me that my life was done.                          1360

The image of death stabs constantly into my

Vitals, and like a sword stirs all my guts.

And now high noon had contracted the slim shadows,

Evening and dawn were equally distant.

Three times, yea four, I saw the bodies of comrades

Flung down, their death a portent of my own.

Seeing the faces of others dripping with gore,

I was struck with the fear of my own death.

Watching the cruel hands, the eyes devoid of the light

Of law, I said, “This is the end of man,”                                1370

Since beasts had seized the government and arms of men,

And there was no equity in their laws.

This becomes for me the surest cause of anxious

Fear, and the start of a worse fate for me,

For since I had seen the leaders yield to the serfs,

There was no more hope for help from the fates.

Those who broke out of Gehenna broke into my

House, taking away the laws of order.

Thus fleeing, I sudden left the site of the ruin;

I did not dare to cross my wrecked threshold.                        1380

     And then leaving my home, through the alien fields

I ran, where I put up in wild woodlands.

I fell often, stabbed in the back by people’s tongues,

Guilty although I’d committed no crime.

I was charged in absentia, my cause, although just,

Perished because no one defended it.

Then making my weary way along hostile paths,

I sought, alone, to find a secure way.

Fear at this madness nevertheless lent my feet

Wings, and in fleeing I was like a bird.                                  1390

Thus wandering here and there, where chance was taking me,

In great distress, I tried several places.

Silently, on stealthy foot, eyes wide, ears aching,

My hair standing up stiff, my heart trembling,

Like a frightened boar, hemmed in by the baying pack,

Dismayed, I thought to find some distant place. 

Ah, how often did I lie to myself and say

I’d set a time suitable for my plan!

Though it would be better for me to go someplace,

My foot stays fixed in the midst of the road.                         1400

In my grief I saw nothing suitable; I saw

No fields; no lush garden looked right to me. 

     My mind is distracted, and I cannot decide,

What place offers a better chance to live.

Scarce trusting in myself, changing in one moment

My prayers a thousand times, my heart wavered.

If safe places there were, I’d gladly go to them;

Where my body can’t go, my mind takes me.

But when I thought I would go home during daytime,

My foe seized the roadway and I couldn't.                             1410

I feared I would be seized if I set out at night,

So at no time was there a time for me.

The enemy was on the right, pressed from the left,

And both sides terrified me with like fear.

Ah! how often seeing madmen I sought shadows,

My ear ever open to its fullest!

Ah! how often I hid in woods, scarce dared the caves,

Fearing at night what the morning might bring!

Ah! how often fear struck my mind, saying to me,

“Why do you flee? You’ll live but short time here!”             1420

Ah! how often I failed to heed what I now was,

What I had been still held me in its grip!

Often during the day, when the sun was brightest,

Night came untimely to my fearful eyes.

     Dreams that mimic my state of affairs frighten me,

And my emotions wake to my losses.

My feelings dissolve with sleep-inducing worries,

As fresh wax will do when set near a fire.

Unless some better image restores me in sleep,

I see my native land’s abandoned homes.                              1430

Like a hare, I traveled oft through slanting shadows,

Where there’s a wooded hollow in the vale.

A field devoid of trees and open on all sides

Caused me to fee unsafe at any time.

A dense old forest untouched by any hatchet

Became safer for me than any church.

Then unaccustomed exertion tired me, so that

I could scarce here or there take halting steps.

Thus fleeing my own home, my mind recoiled from caves,

But bore that evil to escape a worse.                                      1440

Putting aside my pride, without any shelter,

I made a bed of grass combined with leaves.

If I could have, I would have hid beneath some duff,

Since nothing then was safe above the ground;

Hiding somewhere each day, trembling at every sound,

I fled, aware of the dangers I saw.

Fending off hunger with nuts, I covered myself

With grass and leaves, nor did I move a hand.

Grief was the cure for my mind, and tears were flowing

Like sustenance into my stomach’s pit.                                 1450

Then my food was grass, then my impulse was to run

To deep forests, since castles were no help. 

I fed my hunger with my sweat and with my tears,

And numbness made that food enough for me.

     Grieving, I was afraid most of the time; the cause 

Of my great fear, above all, was God’s wrath.

Since I was alone, I was sad, without solace,

Compelled to walk wandering on unknown paths.

Thus hidden places multiply hidden sorrows,

Without a companion to lighten care.                                      1460

But since sorrow alone brings joys to an exile,

I am able to put on a sad face,

So tears bring joy to tears and so does grief to griefs,

While I grieve what no one can remedy.

And tears arising in my breast slide down my cheeks,

Since hope has become hostile to my fate.

My tears are endless, except when numbness blocks them,

And a stupor just like death binds my breast.

Then dread checks both my gushing tears and inner voice,

In a condition something like a trance.                                  1470

Reaching toward the sun’s light, I extended my arms,

And they signed what my tongue could not manage.

And when my spirit’s fierce ardor had dried my tears,

My sighs proclaimed that now it was their turn.

I was pale as a sheet, roiled by evils within,

My mind shook like the surface of the sea.

The ghastly color in my face revealed outside

What hid in the depths of my teeming brain.

Fear and terror, the madness in my anxious face,

Made me look like someone I didn’t know.                           1480

     While my mind sorrowed, my body complained, its bones

Protruded forth, and no food pleased my lips.

I seemed now to have lost my human countenance,

And my wan features showed the marks of soil.

The blood forsook my brain, and color my body,

And dirt looked more attractive than I did.

Because my body had been dried up a long time,

It had but thin skin to cover my bones.

I’d been fearful in my mind so long that I lost

My appearance and became someone else.                            1490

I had only scarcely held onto my right mind,

Since no good fate swore to keep faith with me.

I was not free to share my thoughts with anyone;

Nay, rather my mouth, quiet, held its words.

If happenstance conveyed some comrade here to me,

Together we blended sorrowful tears.

It was rare that I was consoled by friendly words,

Because scarcely one friend was faithful then.

It was a doubtful time, when none had a sure friend

Such as he had been accustomed to have.                              1500

     The man who had borne me true love previously

Ceased then, however, in an adverse time.

Then I sought out faithful brothers, but not the ones

Their father would have wished that he’d not sired.

About to speak, I’d think myself amidst plotters,

And, looking at the ground, say but few words.

I frittered away empty moments with bland words, 

When chance compelled me to speak with someone.

Many times a mild response discourages wrath;

Safety came then from non-committal words.                            1510

And often, when struggling I wished to proffer words,

My tongue faltered, frozen by forebodings.

Not to burden others by asking for the news,

My tongue avoided the wretched events.

Often I wanted to speak my mind, but I feared

I’d give myself away, and held my tongue.

Alas! dreary fate stubbornly pressed me, wretched,

And no gentler hour came in my misery.

If a wretched life is a kind of death, I think

My life at that time was the same as death.                            1520

     Thus wherever I look, there’s nothing but death’s mark,

Which I think no man able to remove.

I often wished I’d die, rather than see such sights,

Or that I could be safe from these monsters.

I determined to die, since it’s written. “Death frees

All, which it releases from evil’s threat.”

"O grief of Fortune, I said, “spare me further pain,

Allow me to live fully or to die.”

But the only goal I had was the hope of death;

I did not dare approach my home’s threshold.                       1530

Then sudden came murmurs to my mind’s recesses,

And often for grief brought such words as these:

“Oh you who will not live to see the break of day,

How much better your fortune is than mine.

Alas! since my death won’t occur in my own bed,

There’ll be no one to mourn me when I’m dead.

If my spirit will now go forth into the sky,

No friendly hand shall oil my limbs reposed.

But if my lot has fulfilled those years that it owed,

And the end of my life has sudden come,                              1540

Lo! God, you know that I do not refuse your dooms;

When you smite, I endure what I’ve deserved.”

     And when my raging grief overwhelms me the more,

And I’m still tossed about by my bleak lot,

Behold! Wisdom says, sympathetic to my grief,

“Leave off, I pray, your tears, and be patient.

The Fates don’t want your reproaches, but trust that God

Has knocked you down that he might lift you up.

Guiltless, you endure God’s wrath, not his punishment.

Fear not, for every sorrow has its end.”                                 1550

With such-like and similar instances, Wisdom

Advised me to be patient, without dread.

But my mind was aware, although I’m free of fault,

Only a doubtful safety could be hoped.

No craft was great enough to bring back happy times,

And take from me the wrath of the divine.

There had been such great discord in my weary mind,

That I could scarcely preserve my senses.

What then was in my mind, or what ought to have been,

When neither death nor life seemed a sure thing?                 1560

Now this, now that, I thought of in my unsure mind,

On a day that brought me no peace or joy.

Since my despair was greater when I was asleep,

I said the following in a low voice:

“Cruel sleep, why have you held me helpless in your grip?

I should have been taken by death at once.”

And so my mind quarreled often with my sorrows,

“Why do you weep?” it said, “you’ll be gone soon.”

     So my wretched body was worn by wakeful cares,

Which dreams allowed my waking mind to bear.                  1570

Fear overwhelmed me, and I stood, sad, without light,

And all the color drained out of my face.

Bowled over by the mighty storm of such miseries,

I often became senseless, like a stone.

As my mind returned, however, my griefs did too,

Since life could not disown death from my mind.

Wanting to die, I feared the forebodings of death;

My mind told me nothing would get better.

I would have complained aloud, but my grief-filled bowels

Stopped me, and allowed no words at the time.                     1580

My voice’s strength was checked by my sobs, and my tongue,

Fearing the onset of tears, curbed its way.

My death is life, my life is death, which is sweeter

Than life, and love of death smacks of living.

Alone, forlorn, hopeless, almost bereft of life,

I considered if my lot were certain.

Such marvels I endured then, which I scarce recall

Now, could not be told in an entire year.

If someone wanted to know what happened to me,

What I’d tell them would take no little time.                         1590

Thus continuously, in wide-ranging sorrows,

I endured my weary and savage times.

Chapter 17

     Here, also according to the vision of his dream, he describes as if in his own person the various torments that occurred to those who took themselves to the Tower of London in the hope of safety, and of the breaching of that same tower. He figures the aforesaid tower to be like a ship in danger near the whirlpool of Scylla.

     When I perceived that law had forgotten the earth,

And rumors of evils rose everywhere,

Lo! the shock in my dreams then more and more provoked

Fear, and often led me on doubtful ways. 

As I feared what I should do, unsure what might be

Safe, that wrath led my eyes to cast about.

Not far off, I saw a ship, and I ran towards it,

Hoping that my lot would be safer there.                               1600

Behold! I saw a ladder and I climbed aboard,

Where a kind sailor found a place for me.

I saw how many others of the freeborn class

Boarded the ship, whom total fear possessed.

There was from top to bottom scarce any degree

Of those who were then of noble lineage,

But that, fearful, they climbed that ship amidst the sea,

Where they sought peace, if any there might be.

But whatever others did, I had always one

Concern: that I escape the madmen safe.                               1610

Having boarded the ship, with timid mind I prayed

That fair winds would give me following seas.

My prayer calls on Christ, whom the winds and sea revere,

That he give me smooth passage through the sea.

“Be thou my guide, Star of the Sea, be thou my cure,

If you lead where the waves go, I’ll be safe.”

     When the waves of the sea had carried us offshore,

And the ship’s course had found the best currents,

I told myself that I was fully quit of earth’s

Furies, but as for that, my hope was vain.                              1620

For just when my hopes had been raised that I would find

Peace, suddenly sorrow’s cause was at hand.

Its terrible face hidden in the tarry murk,

The sky aloft makes war upon the straits.

The blasts of the four winds roar so loud, the anchor

Was unable to hold our helpless ship.

Beside himself, on sodden wings, Notus flew forth,                          

Whose guttering caused furious damage.

Earth’s power could not hold those heavenly waters

Which Libra, pendent above, was surging.                            1630

Thus they’re hurled relentlessly upon the surface,

Whence the sea’s swollen waves conquer the land.

Heaven raged against our ship with discordant winds,

And the sea’s driven wave crashed on our oars.

Thunder resounded, a squall line poured from the sky;

A host of troubles tossed our ship about.

     Juno’s swollen messenger put on her diverse                           

Colors and flung down waters diverse ways.

It is not a sweet drop that she pours, nay rather

Foul, bitter, sharp, vile, sour, and unhealthy.                        1640

This fluid lacks a decent taste, stabs the drinkers’

Vitals, and looses all at once his guts.

Oh happy the man who then avoided such rains,

More noxious than the Styx or Phlegethon!                            

No matter how I was tossed, I clung to the ship,

Which almost sank in the sea’s raging wrath.

Owls went for a swim with larks in this water's flood,

Wolves with sheep, and the unjust with the just.

Our plowing hull suffered this sudden waters’ force,

Which rushed upon the castles and the deck.                         1650

The great whales grew fearful of such a huge torrent,

When more and more the ocean’s wrath increased. 

Enormous downpours pelted from the bursting clouds,

And the lightning’s wrath sounded midst the sky.

You’d think all the sky had collapsed upon the strait,

And Iris frighted all lands with her threats.

The swollen sea climbed up the expanse of the sky,

As if it wished to leave its proper place, 

The while it spread out, growing white with hissing foam,

And took below what had been up above.                               1660

Now, when it churns the tawny sands up from the depths,

The water's surface takes a yellow hue.

      The torments that the seas or winds could conjure up,

They furnished with surges and grievous gusts.

The waters of the sea merge with the heaven’s air,

And, mixed with rain, saltwater surges up.

The sails are sodden from the rains, their cover helps

No single head to keep itself dry then.

The war of the winds agitates the foaming waves,

Which Auster rolls along in constant surge.                              1670    

The winds sent from on high are the lords of the seas,

And render aimless the course of the ship.

Foul night spreads over us, and bright lightning itself

Gives light to the dark with its flashing fires.

When during the night the sea began to whiten

With crests, and Eurus raged headlong in arms,

The captain shouts, “Run to the yards,” and orders us,

“Let go the topsails of the ship at once.”

He orders this, but adverse gales countermand him;

The sea’s uproar does not let him be heard.                           1680

Others, however, hasten to manage the oars;

Some shore up the ship’s sides with their efforts. 

One pumps out the flood, pours the sea upon the sea,

One removes spars, which flail without restraint.

The winds go to war and roil the raging narrows,

Rendering useless men’s further efforts.

Such a bold evil force had overwhelmed his ship,

That the crazed man lost his wavering courage.

Terrified, he did not know the situation,

Since fear from his frozen mind iced his heart.                      1690

The men cry out as the rigging and cordage groan;

The captain attempts no more with the oars.

The sea was all, and the shores receded from it,

And the deep bears its portents to the throne.

Chapter 18 

     Here he tells, according to the vision of his dream, how the storm increased so greatly that everybody on the aforementioned ship doubted there would be sure relief without God’s intervention, and above all anyone from the freeborn class in particular entreated God devoutly.

    Twinned colors paint the vault dark grey and rusty red,              

And heaven's wrath is spread out everywhere.

Wrath thunders aloft, the abyss beneath ruptures,

And the earth spews out rivers from its guts.

The clouds pour down unheard-of sheets of rain, our ship

Takes from all quarters countless heavy seas.                        1700

Our vessel, adrift, doesn't know what its fate holds,

And swims amidst oceans of sea and rain.

The sea confounds minds with terrible mutterings--

The fearful sound alone terrifies us.

The sky is so grievously overspread with darkness,

That we can't see our hands before our eyes.

Then there come from the sky omens that threaten death,

And each awaits what the fates wish for him.

The air aloft is filled with flames from the Furies,

And frenzy on all sides spurs the waters.                               1710

Then the flaming fire discharges ferocious sounds,

And shoots an ember like a lightning bolt.

The fire-spewing flow so confused us, that all

Fell still and silently bowed down their heads.

Our skill failed us, our spirits fell, our strength faltered,

And we were left without a shred of hope.

     Then, beyond this, a huge sea beast coming arose

From the sea, snorting waves from its nostrils.

Just like a ship fitted out with a ramming prow,

It plowed the waters, striking all with fear.                            1720

The fierce creature has a broad wave beneath its breast,

And demands for itself the right of way.

Brother of Scylla, it’s madder than Charybdis,

And sought, just like hell’s maw, what it might gulp.

Seeing this, a bold man loses his inner heart’s

Strength, which dread suddenly snatches away.

And now the helmsman, raising his hands to the stars,

Neglecting his skills, asks for help in prayer.

The wind defeats his craft, and he no longer holds

The reins, so an errant ship plows the strait.                         1730

As if sick with fever, we find food abhorrent,

And without health our minds spewed out their sense.

Hands and eyes open, we stretched our arms to heaven;

With sorrowful minds, we begged assistance. 

Some wept, some were struck dumb, some called upon the saints,

And all invoked their God for salvation.

The captain, commending everything to God, said,

“May Heaven’s Master rapidly send aid.”

A seam opened, offering lethal waves entrance,

And all thought it an opening for death.                                 1740

I saw Scylla, and then I saw Charybdis, too,

And both sides aspired to devour our ship.

     O how then was the Tower of London this ship’s

Likeness--because a savage storm shook it;

A tower lacking a wall, where rock took paper’s

Form, which dirty flies pushed through and entered;

A tower where the gate declined to set its bars,

Whose chamber bore shameful penetration;

A tower open to madmen, where each peasant

Entering in looted goods and quarters;                                   1750

A tower where strength capitulates to weakness,

A tower where courage assists no man;

A tower hoping for aid, its defenses gone,

And left, without counsel, unto itself;

A disgraced tower, and foul bloody patricide,

Whose nagging fame will last as long as time;

A tower whose leopard’s cave was broken into,

Which, driven forth, left like a faithful lamb;

A tower where a rotted Tyle oppressed the Crown,

Where puny foot stood upon mighty head;                   1760

A tower redolent of ill health, not frankincense,

Lament, not play, filled up with loathsomeness;

A tower divided of tongue as Babel was,

A tower like that Tarshish ship asea.

So the tower submits, crushed by vice’s maelstrom,

Not knowing where to find the righteous way.

Everyone grieves, but not like me, since shipwrecking

Scylla has its sights on my bitter ruin.

Waking, as if with eyes shrouded in sleep, I saw

These signs that made me fear harms yet to come.                1770

     There’s no doubt that I was terrified and alarmed,

When in those dreams I thought I bore such things.

Brought into doubtful dangers, how oft did I say,

That the ocean was safer than my ship?

Shaken, I was afraid of Eurus and Zephyr,

Frigid Boreas and hurtling Notus.

These four winds throughout the four quarters of the earth

Blow, and nobody can withstand their blasts.

Our fortune is driven by hurricane force headwinds,

And no one’s lot could be grimmer than mine.                      1780

Wretched, I thought about the fates that were dealt me,

And deemed that evil came by my own fault.

Thus thinking to myself, I said, beneath my breath,

“My own fault brought me what I now suffer.”

There were no sins hidden in the vaults of my heart,

That I did not call one by one to mind.

My heart called to mind the commission of my sins,

And what it saw stimulated my prayers.

There was not a saint whom my tongue did not implore,

When the portents seen asea forecast doom.                          1790

Ready to appease with my prayers the burning wrath

Of God, I offered up these words with tears.

     “O Founder of the human race, Christ Redeemer,

Without whom on earth naught is better, or good,

You spoke, and all things were established by your word,

You bade, and all created things appeared.

In your word the heavens are provided their form,

And your spirit then made all this splendor.

Through you are the waters, and also their fixed bounds,

And every kind of fish that’s in the seas.                               1800

The air with its birds you created by your word,

And gave the wind breath in four directions.

You made earth with your almighty divinity,

Which the order you arranged made stable.

Through you live all the terrestrial living things,

And everything that crawls is ‘neath your law.

Just so, you made man at the end in your image,

Rational, that he surmount all your work,

Who, urged to transgress your commandment by that old

Serpent, perished from a bite of apple.                          1810

But so by your mercy you redeem him from death,

You were become flesh from a virgin’s flesh.

And thus, parent of our kind, by earthly love you

Were made, whence you’d be more beloved by us.

Since I believe that you are my God and parent,

I beg you, gentle Father, guide my fate!

Since it did not shame you to bleed upon death’s cross,

Thus in my time of troubles, Christ, forbear!

You who snatched Paul from the sea, Peter from prison,

Jonah from the whale’s belly, think of me!                  1820

God never leaves those who hope in him, visiting

The sick, cheering the exiled, lending aid.

I’ve sinned, I return; I beg you, forgive this wretch!

The time has come to comfort the wretched.

Spare, I pray, your lightning and put away your bolts,

Which cause so much sorrow to wretched me!

     “O! I implore you, to whom I send my prayers,

Let my tearful voice in your divine ear!

Already near cast down by earth, I’m cold and sick;

If saved I may be, I’ll be saved by you.                                 1830

“O God,” I said, “put your hand to our splintered oars,

And grant me, shipwrecked, refuge on your shores!

May she who cured the human race with Christ’s coming

Provide me to my cure a mother’s aid.                                               

I pray you, kind God, that she mediate for me,

Who bore a flower without being deflowered.

Why don’t you free me from the troubles I endure?

Lo, we’re dying; behold! a plague threatens!”

While I was prostrate in my prayer, more coming blows

Awaiting, without hope and health I feared.                          1840

Then suddenly a blow struck our ship, which almost

Foundered, nearly swallowed by Scylla’s wrath.

But the kindly strength of prayer withstood the maelstrom’s

Thirsty mouth, wherefore it was not sated.

We remained in uncertainty as to our fate;

We had neither reasonable hope nor fear.

He perishes more gently whom waves gulp right down,

Than he whose strong arms beat the fearful seas.

Yet all plead incessantly, offering up vows

Kneeling, and cast aloft their pious prayers.                          1850

Chapter 19 

     Here, according to the vision of his dream, he conceives of a certain divine voice shouting on high, and how God, placated by prayers, finally stills the storm, and how as if in a fiery sacrifice the jay, that is Walter, the captain of the madmen, was killed for his crime.

     Our outcry, tears, and constant groans, arose on high,

And God’s mercy did not overlook them.

Nevertheless Neptune, god of the sea, appears

To calm the sea and demand sacrifice.

Our offerings and our prayers availed, for which the god,

Appeased, nodded to our vows and our pleas.

Thus while the tempest on the swollen sea raged on,

And deadly dangers were plain to be seen,

The spirit of righteousness moved Mayor William                            

In his thinking to the depths of his heart.                               1860

Grasping fast his sword, he toppled with it that proud                       

Jay, and with that he brought things to an end.                                         

One bird died, that a thousand thousand live again,

And Neptune stopped up the sea’s raging mouth.

Thus, although late and compelled by crimes committed,

Our grieving ill-starred ship took to its arms.

Lo, the jay is dead! They did not die unavenged,

Whom he struck with his beak for a weapon.

The cutthroat who killed with the sword perished by it;

The evildoer set the example.                                  1870

Having heaped crime upon crime, and corpse upon corpse,

The reaper gathers in the crop he sowed.

The dead man’s spirit departed on gentle winds;

God alone knows if it went to the pit.

Since he had taken up warfare so bestially,

The prayers of the foolish peasant were void.

Since what had been wanted on high had been fulfilled,

His cursed lot ceased from its rampages.

Perhaps that day would have been error’s pinnacle,

If God had denied his aid with that death.                              1880

Oh what great comfort the mighty victor brought me,

Who raised on high what the fates had cast down!

Oh blessed hand that offered required sacrifice,

By which the sea’s tempest, conquered, was stilled!

Even as the sea’s waves raged the most, since God wished,

Salvation’s welcome hour came from above.

That God had removed his wrath for the time being,

A voice made an announcement from on high.

From the midst of the air, borne by the divine voice,

Such was then unto our ears related.                                       1890

It said, “Behold! I will allow you yet some time,

And postpone my sentence out of mercy.”

At this, Scylla, submissive, checked its gaping jaws;

What it had first gulped, it spewed forth at once.

Thus, God bidding, our ship, which the savage maelstrom

Swallowed, is raised, clinging, from ocean’s depths.

Thus its earlier harsh heaving has been subdued,

Such a force comes from the celestial voice.

And, faltering, I am as revived by its words,

As, flush with wine, a pulse grows strong again.                   1900

     The sailors give a cheer, some surge aloft, and each

Rushes swiftly to tend to his duties.

On the cusp of life and death, they quickly correct

The course, where they deem it safer to go.

They raise the small portion of the sails that remained

Intact, so that they then could steer the ship.

The waters’ maw and flood were so overwhelming,

That the earth scarce returned the waters calmed.

But he who walked the sea afoot, compassionate,

Curbing the horrors, granted happy times.                             1910

He constrained the seas and closed the sky’s openings,

And bade the angry waters to recede.

The north wind blew the clouds away, the spray settled,

And thunder’s booming voice rampaged no more.

He calmed the sea's waters, returned them to their bounds,

Lest the sea’s wrath o'erwhelm our crippled craft.

And then he showed earth the sky and the sky, the earth,

And checked the raging furies of the sea.

Then peace returns as waves retreat, shores re-emerge,

And safety is restored to the righteous.                                  1920

     The powers of darkness fled from the new-cleansed sky,

And long-awaited day shines brightly forth.

The risen light revealed solid earth with its rays,

And our ominous plight came to an end.

The sea keeps its shore, channels contain their rivers,

New paths are opened to the rule of law.

Thus, as God wished, when the wave is more moderate,

Our anxieties are tempered by joys.

All then praise Christ, that he did not let the maelstrom

Overwhelm them, but that he restored them.                         1930

Then on bent knee, with my hands up to the heavens

Outstretched, I said, “Glory be, Christ, to you!”

Repeating this, I cast off the freezing fear’s reins,

And new hope smooths a joyous way for me. 

Since the sea had been stilled and the wind was friendly,

Hope returns, lifting sailors’ downcast hearts.

The crew regain their strength, and one quaking sailor

Steers, attempting to reach a safe harbor.

The mariner has new sails put before the winds,

Hoping better luck, and the canvas flaps.                               1940

Chapter 20 

     Here he talks about that ship still seen in his dreams, that is, about his still agitated mind. It was as if he himself, fantasizing in his thoughts, had investigated every corner of the world, looking for peace of mind like a ship adrift at the mercy of the winds. At last, he says, he reached parts of Greater Britain, where peace is scarce. He also tells how the voice in his dreams commanded that he write everything he had seen and heard about the world in that search. With that the dream is ended.

     Still my eyes closed in sleep, in which my dreams ever

Pictured a ship that searched for a safe port. 

Fear could not readily leave my wandering mind,

Before it might come safely into port.

The oars on both sides had been shattered by the winds,

And the ship held its course where fortune led.

On the lookout for peaceful shores, it searched every

Quadrant, but it could find no safe harbor;

But the swirling waves of the sea at last brought it

To a port where, alas! wickedness raged.                                      1950

Thus in fleeing Scylla, it faced no lesser risks,

When an island more dangerous took it in.

This was a broad island, protected all around,

Which was fruitful, girt by ocean’s waters.

When we arrived in port, I disembarked and went

Ashore at once, where a tremendous crowd 

Of people came running to meet me, one of whom

Happened to be worthy above the rest.

I asked him, “Tell me, what island is this, who are

These people and why do they act this way?”                       1960

Lo! that old man, who was standing at the harbor,

Answered my questions with these fearful words:

     “This used to be called the isle of exiled Brutus,

Which Diana gave him out of pity.

The practice of the people who live in this land

Is to hold more with discord than with love.

For since this people has sprung from various tribes,

It has the faults of its diverse make-up.

They are handsome in form, but by nature

Lo! they are fiercer than the savage wolf.                              1970

They don’t fear the laws, overthrow what’s right by force,

And, bellicose, put Justice to the sword.

Uncivilized by laws, this folk plots frauds, uproars,

Wickedness, armed conflicts, plagues and nuisance.

The men from the localities of this country

Have hearts more turbulent than the ocean.

This land has arisen from various sources,

But it always has blood, slaughter, and war.

Its torn-up fields grow but the sorrowful wormwood,

Whose fruit shows how bitter this country is.                                    1980

I think if they would only love one another,

There’d be no folk more righteous ‘neath the sun.”

     I heard many more things, and they all disturbed me,

Alas! renewed grief now incites my heart.

Just when I thought that God would be sweeter to me,

There was Fortune’s bitter apparition.

When I saw how relentless my fate was, I cracked,

My modest hopes, crushed by great fear, collapsed.

Thus pierced by the iniquitous shafts of Fortune,

I felt in my heart nothing but sadness.                                   1990

I had reached port, yet was terrified by that port,

The unsafe land more dreadful than the sea.

Thus tossed right back on disconcerting land and sea,

I don’t know how I’ll make a safe escape.

Thus I suffer the snares of both man and the sea,

Swords and waves constituting my twin fears.

Why did I escape so many swords, why did no

Threatening storm overwhelm my wretched head?

Now my hopes died, since Chance had led me to abide

In such a port where peace cannot be found.                         2000

Color had left my face, atrophy shrunk my limbs

(My downcast mouth had taken little food).

Just as slender stalks are shaken by a light wind,

And poplar leaves shivered by a cold breeze,

When I wished to go on I was all atremble,

With a pain just like childbirth in my heart.

When I lament, the tears follow upon my words,

And earth receives the water from my eyes.

May God be my witness, who makes my feelings reel,

I don’t know what more to do in this world.                          2010

So once again, convulsed anew from my heart’s depths,

I fell like a dead man down on the ground.

And when at last I raised from the dirt my eyes and

Body, I looked behind and to each side,

And lo! there was utterly nothing; like shadows

Ship and crowd were gone, and I was alone.

Seeing I was alone, I grieved yet all the more,

And my spirit became melancholy,

When suddenly the celestial voice I had heard

Before, proclaimed these words that follow here:                         2020

      “Sorrow will do you no good; if it behooved you

To fear harm while you’ve circled the earth’s seas,

You must still watch yourself closely, for you've landed

In a hostile isle, where peace rarely thrives.

All the less, therefore, should you strive for earthly gains,

For this world offers no rewards for peace.

If strife should assail you without, in inner peace,

God helping, control yourself with patience.

When madness rushes in, give way to fury’s rush,

All onslaughts are most difficult at first.                                             2030

Leave off struggling, let the winds direct your canvas,

And let your rudder take you as tides bid.

Whether the earth is warmed up by day, or the stars 

Shine cold, watch for which straits the winds stir up.

When you look around to see how times go, believe

Nothing you’ve seen unless it’s close at hand.

There’s divine power at play in human affairs,

And the present hour rarely shows what's true.

Be cautious always, and know that what seems joyous

Can become dolorous while you’re speaking.                       2040

Who is silent is strong; who says a lot in haste

Will bring shame enough down upon himself.

Leisure refreshes the body, which it nourishes,

And too much labor will do you damage.

Nature celebrates moderation, but a man

Who indulges himself always wants more.

So I admonish you, when leisure gives you time,

Hasten to write what you have seen and heard

In this vision, for dreams can render the future’s

Judgment.” And behold! after saying this,Vox Clamantis Book II                     2050

The sound of the voice is heard no more, and with that

It chanced that the rooster then, in his way,

Delivered his song to the dawn, at which I was,

Waking, dumbfounded now my dream was gone.

I could scarcely understand if what I had seen

Had been within my body or without.

But now, because I wake alive, with all fear gone,

My hopes in the Lord are even greater.

Chapter 21 

     Here waking he gives thanks to God, who saved him from the sea in his dreams.

     As I saw the world more clearly with waking eyes,

That day was clear, the clouds were driven off,                    2060

As I saw the madmen suppressed by ancient law,

A broken way restored by law anew,

As I now patted my body’s parts all over,

Happy my head was still on my shoulders,

Old friendships returned with the passing rush of wrath,

And the rights of men were at last restored.

Revived by my heart’s restoration, I offered

Songs of praise to the Lord’s celestial throne.

But yet I confess my courage had not returned,

I'd borne such sudden troubles recently.                             2070

Who’s been harmed like a fish by a treacherous hook,

Will think there are barbs in all of his food;

He’s scarce safe today who came to grief yesterday,

A shipwrecked man fears even calm waters.

Thus when I recall I had been in great danger,

My previous plight warned me more could follow. 

Thus when I’m asea, I know I’ll recall that storm,

Because I can’t get it out of my mind.

     Alas! When I am forced to recall the sorrow

Of that time, when misery was everywhere!                          2080

Now, because I escaped alive from that madness,

I render with joy songs of praise to God.

Mary, Star of the Sea, who calmed the bitter flood

Lest I perish, her I praise, now I'm safe.

Above all I’m glad Scylla did not swallow me,

Into whose gullet I had been put whole.

I’d survived among dangers, amidst enemies,

But I’m free now because of God’s mercy.

I have passed through the dens and by the fearsome jaws

Of beasts, but I was not gripped in death’s bite.                    2090

Like a rose among thorns that avoids the sharp stabs,

I was plucked from the swords of murderers.

     Thus when the peasantry had been bound fast in chains,

And lay suffering underneath our foot,

The ox returned to the yoke, seed grew in the plowed

Fields, and the villein desisted from war.

Satan’s power likewise lay crushed by divine might,

Though it lurks yet in untamable serfs;

For always till forever serfdom lies in wait,

For a chance to subdue the freeborn class.                             2100

For the fierce peasantry is not gentled by love,

But, bitter, ever bears a hostile heart.

Now crushed, the slavish plowman fears, but does not love,

And harms in a trice the man who feeds him. 

Let the goad of fear be firmly driven in him,

And let weights oppress those whom peace drives mad.

A sensible man who's prepared is not deceived;

From past troubles, he discerns future harm.

But God’s right hand did mighty work, in order that

A day filled with fury would pass me by.                           2110

The trap was sprung, from which I escaped, a free man,

And I awoke just like a man renewed.

Just as I sudden fell, of a sudden God gave

My case relief, steadied my faltering foot.

I now see that dream is alive, I think it is

My life, and this great new fact fills my heart.

Heaven saved me, no matter it sent much lightning;

That tempest frightened, but did me no harm.

     You who mercifully gave me counsel to live,

When love of death was in my wretched breast,                    2120

It behooves me that, alive, I now render you

Praise, God, since you are more than life to me.

I ask, God, that you renew my joy, since the gate

Of happiness has long been closed to me.

Oh if my land, which the sea did not swallow up,

Would know it should render prayer owed to God!

The Lord has punished, but then not delivered it

To death’s cancer, for his wrath stayed its hand.

Whatever praise others offer, I’ll not be still,

Whom God plucked from sea’s maw in its rages.                  2130

For since my mind drank in all those raging waves,

In which it tossed, released it spews them out.

Although the wave of the sea took me, I praise God

That my wit did not succumb to the flood.

Whilst my mind recalls, it will record the details,

Which, as if waking from a kind of dream,

I fearfully conceived; however, I’ve not found

Rest, and bear everything in inmost heart. 

We did not give the dream those hours that it requires;

Granted, I but imaged troubles in dreams.                                2140

O wakeful dreams, in which no vision such as mine

Was of a sleeping, but a waking sort!

O wakeful dreams, you who have brought true dreams to me,

From which every man yet to come can learn!

O wakeful dreams, whose significance has henceforth

To be retold in my troubled poetry!

Since the voice ordered me to write all that I saw,

I will apply myself with all my heart.

Now let the old work proceed that erstwhile was mine,

Recent concerns be pushed aside for new.                           2150