Piers Plowman
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135 On joking japesters, harlots and whores,
While God’s own people perish as paupers.
But priests and clerics who pile up cash
Lose it or leave it to light-fingered crooks
Or die intestate and attract the attention
140 Of the bishop and his men who make merry with the money:
‘The man was a miser too mean to give a penny
To friend or foe, confound him,’ they say.
‘His household was always empty-handed and cold,
So we’ll laugh as we spend what he struggled to save.’
145 The lordly and lowly reluctant to spend
All lose their goods once they give up the ghost,
While the good are regretted and greatly lamented,
And are missed and remembered for their generous meals
In prayers and penances and charitable payments.”
150 “What is charity?” I asked. “It’s child’s play,” he answered:
“Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.10
It’s the will to give freely without foolhardy folly.”
“Where can I find such a friend who gives freely?
For as long I’ve lived in this land as Long Will,11
Nowhere I’ve known true charity meet needs.
155 People are compassionate to beggars and the poor
And make loans if they’re likely to recover the lot,
But I swear I’ve seen no charity of the sort
That is pleasing to our Savior and was praised by Saint Paul:
Charity is not puffed up; is not ambitious, seeketh not her own.12
For everyone I see, so help me, wants to have
160 Whatever is his and often desires
What he scarcely requires but will steal if he can.
Clerics may proclaim that Christ is universal,
But I see him solely in the mirror as myself:
We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face.13
From the tales of Charity that are told I think
165 That his territory is neither tournaments nor trade.”
“No, Charity doesn’t bargain or beat his breast,
Is not covetous, is as proud of a penny as a pound,
Is as glad of a gray as a gaudy coat,
Of a woolen smock as of silks and scarlet,
170 Rejoices at joy and is generous to the wicked,
And relieves and loves all those made by the Lord.
He curses no creature and cannot bear wrath,
Doesn’t laugh men to scorn or like to tell lies,
He accepts what men say as the simple truth
175 And suffers all slights in silent forbearance
For his only hope is for heavenly bliss.”
“Has he rent from property or rich companions?”
“He reckons nothing to rents and riches,
For he’s never been failed by a friend when in need,
180 Thy will be done, which well meets his wants,14
And he eats just a helping of Hope in God.15
He paints the Lord’s Prayer with Hail Mary pigments,
And his other pastime is to plead for pardons
By making a pilgrimage to prisons and the poor,
185 Though he brings not bread but a better food,
The love and relief that our Lord enjoined.
And when he is weary from doing such work,
He labors in a laundry for as long as it takes
And assiduously seeks in his sometime youth
190 For pride and its properties and parcels them up
And beats and bleaches them clean in his breast
With I have labored in my groanings till the grime is gone,16
Then he washes them with water that is warm from his eyes
And sobs sometimes as he sings another psalm:
A contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”17
195 “By Christ,” I cried, “I wish we were acquainted!”
“That’s impossible except through Piers the Plowman.”
“But the clergy,” I said, “must surely have seen him.”
“The clergy only witness men’s works and their words,
But Piers,” he replied, “penetrates deeper
200 Into why people suffer and their secret wishes:
Jesus seeing their thoughts, said: Why do you think evil in your hearts?18
For proud-hearted people may talk genteelly
And defer to figures of authority and finance,
But they treat the poor with total contempt
And counter their critics with the claws of a lion.
205 And some beggars with beads who appear to be praying
May look to be lambs who lead holy lives
But they put on their penury to pick up their food,
Not pining for purity or seeking for penance.
So you will not spot Charity by what he wears,
210 By his words or deeds or what his heart wills,
Which no one can know, not even clerics,
Only Piers the Plowman, Peter, that is, Christ.19
“He is not among idlers or ambling hermits
Or anchorites holding out boxes for alms:
215 Such deceivers and their sponsors deserve not a bean.
Charity is God’s champion, a well-mannered child;
His speech will sparkle when he sits at table,
The love in his heart lending it lightness;
He’s the comforting company that Christ desired:
Be not as the hypocrites, sad.20
220 I have seen him in silks as well as in smocks,
In gray cloth and glad rags and gilded armor,
Which he’ll give away gladly to regale the needy.
“Kings Edward the Confessor and Edmund are famed
And respected as saints for the charity they showed.
225 I’ve seen Charity sing, recite lessons and psalms,
I have seen him both ride and run about in rags,
But nowhere and never have I known him to beg.
He strolls abroad rather in robes that are rich,
With short hair, skull cap and a shaven crown.
230 He was formerly found in a friar’s habit,
Far back in history in the age of Saint Francis,
But since then he’s seldom been seen in such sects.
Yet he honors the wealthy and welcomes their alms
If the lives that they lead are honest and loyal:
Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish.21
235
“He comes quite often to the court of the King,
Except when Covetousness sits in council,
But is seldom seen in the society of jesters
Who backbite, brawl and bear false witness.
He is rarely encountered in the clerical courts,
240 Where hearings are endless without heavy back-handers
And marriages are made and unmade for money,
The doctors of law indecently undoing
What Conscience and Christ have concluded and sealed.
“His abode was once with archbishops and bishops,
245 And prelates of the Church, and his previous practice
Was to parcel their patrimony out to the poor;
Now Avarice has the keys and keeps it for his kin,
His executors and servants, and some for their children.
I don’t say who’s responsible, but O Lord, save us
250 And give us the grace to make Charity our guide!
“If you meet him, you’ll note his remarkable manners,
For he does not accuse or curse or acclaim
Or boast or rebuke or flatter or frown,
Or crave or covet or cry out for more:
In peace in the self same I will sleep.22
255 To live he relies on the love of Christ’s Passion,
Neither begging nor borrowing nor embracing loans,
Nor harming nor speaking ill of others.
Christians should copy this gentle kindness,
And hold in their hearts when they’re harried by troubles
260 That Christ suffered more than the misery they meet,
And our Father prefers that we follow his example
And avoid taking vengeance for falsehood on foes.
We are well aware that unless God had willed it,
Neither Judas nor the Jews would have crucified Jesus,
265 Nor imprisoned and martyred Saints Peter and Paul.
But he suffered to show us we should suffer as well,
And to people in pain said, The patient shall conquer.
“This is proved,” said Soul, “by plenty of passages
In the Lives of the Saints, who certainly suffered
270 Both penance and poverty and searing pain,
In hunger and heat, and awful affliction.
Saints Antony and Giles and other holy hermits
Dwelt with wild beasts in the dangerous desert,
And monks and mendicants, men by themselves,
275 Kept to their caves and caverns in silence.
Neither Antony nor Giles nor the other hermits
Would take their livelihood from leopards or lions
But were fed, say the books, by the birds up above,
Save that Giles met a hind, and unhurriedly and gently
280 Sustained himself by supping her milk,
Though solely from time to time, the book tells,
Not taking too much from the mild-mannered mother.23
“Saint Antony was brought his bread by a bird
Every day about noon, and anon it was enough,
285 By God’s grace, for a guest whom Antony greeted.24
Saint Paul, the first hermit, was so happily hidden
By leaves and moss that he remained unremarked,
Sustained by the birds season after season,
Till he founded the fellowship of Austin Friars.25
290 Saint Paul made baskets when he paused in his preaching,26
And earned with his hands what his stomach asked;
Peter fished for his food with his fellow Andrew,
And they sold some, consumed some and so had enough;
Mary Magdalene survived on divine devotion
295 And endured eating roots and drinking the dew.27
It would take me a week to tell you of the total
Of the hermits who lived by the love of our Lord,
And no lion or leopard that roamed the land,
No bear or boar or other wild beast,
300 Failed to fall to its feet and to fawn upon them.
And could they have spoken, by Christ, I declare
They’d have fed those saints faster than the fowls,
For they showed all the courtesy such creatures can
And everywhere humbly licked the saints’ hands.
305 “But God sent bread by the birds, not the beasts,
To mean that the meek should feed the mild,
And that law-abiding folk should feed the religious,
And the righteous relieve those who lead holy lives.
If they found that the friars refused their alms
310 And begged them to take money back where it was borrowed,
Then lords and ladies would be loath to offend
By taking from their tenants more than is true.
For we are God’s fowls and must wait to be fed
On the vital food that the birds provide.
315 If you have thick broth and bread and penny ale,
And you make a meal of them, you monks and friars,
You already have enough, as we read in your Rule:
Will the wild ass bray when he hath grass? Or will the ox low when he standeth before a full manger? and
The nature of brute beasts condemneth thee, for with this common food they are content; and thine iniquity proceeds from plenty.28
If folk were schooled in this story, they would spend
Some five or six days in finding advice
320 Before making over monies to monks and canons.
You lords and ladies, you lack good counsel
When disposing of property and depriving your heirs
For the sake of prayers said by people who have plenty
And are paid to pray for the souls of other patrons.
325 “Who still observes this salutary prophecy:
He hath distributed, he hath given to the poor?29
If anyone performs it, then it is these poor friars!
They beg for funds which they devote to their buildings,
To indulging themselves and spoiling their servants,
Thus taking for the have-nots from those who have!
330 “You clerics and knights and commoners with cash
Behave quite often as if you had a forest
That was full of trees and you were trying to think
Where to put and to plant yet more among them.
For the rich give robes to those who are rich,
335 Helping those who help them, funding those in no need,
Like filling a barrel from a fast-flowing flood
And then taking and tipping the water in the Thames,
Cosseting the fort
unate with food and clothes.30
You clergy with cash should care more for beggars
340 Than wealthy burghers, as the books will warn you:
It is sacrilege to pocket the property of paupers;
A dole given sinners is a sacrifice to demons;
A poor monk dispenses less than he is proffered
But he steals if he stores up more than essential
345 For a monk has no needs if he meets those of nature.31
Christians and Charity should come to an accord,
For Charity is certain to discharge the soul,
Freeing prisoners from Purgatory by the power of his prayers.
But the clergy are culpable and at fault, it is clear,
350 For the fact that folk are not firm in their faith.
A florin that is forged may look like a florin,
With the proper stamp, but the silver is soft.
Thus it fares with some folk who say what is fair
And are tonsured and have taken true holy orders,
355 But their metal, their soul, is melded with sin:
Both learned and lay folk are larded with sin,
And none loves his neighbor, none loves our Lord.
“Through wickedness and war, in weather that is strange,
Weather-wise sailors and widely read scholars
360 Lose faith in the firmament and findings of logic.
Folk who could fairly foretell the future
Now see their science and astronomy adrift,
While shipmen and shepherds, on ship and on shore,
Who once knew the future well from the welkin,
365 Warning men often of weather and winds,
And tillers of tilth who could tell their masters
By the seed that they sowed what they might sell,
What live by, what lend, so true was the land,
Now those shepherds and sailors and tillers can’t see
370 What course is correct, what quarter to steer,
While astronomers argue, unable to say
What causes the chaos in their calculations.
The grounding of grammar is greeted with stares
And no schoolchild I see can construct a letter