Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-10T05:24:27.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“The Question of Halsam”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Helen Pennock South*
Affiliation:
New York University

Extract

In British Museum Addit. MS. 34360 on folio 22 occurs one stanza of rime royal entitled “The question of halsam.” It is smooth in meter, well-balanced in thought, and practically perfect in stanza form, comparing very favorably in these respects with other minor lyrics of the early fifteenth century. The popularity of this poem is attested by its presence in many manuscripts of that century and by the fact that Caxton printed it together with a second seven-line stanza also ascribed to Halsham. Both of these lyrics are found in Bodley 3896, f. 195a (MS. Fairfax 16), which affords not only the earliest, but the most authentic text of these pieces:

      The worlde so wide / thaire so remuable
      The sely man / so litel of stature
      The grove and grounde / of clothinge so mutable
      The fire so hoote / and subtil of nature
      The water neuer in oon / what creature
      That made is of these foure / thus flyttyng
      May stedfast be as here / in his lyving

      The more I goo / the ferther I am behinde
      The ferther behinde / the ner my wayes ende
      The more I seche / þe worse kan I fynde
      The lighter leve / the lother for to wende
      The bet y serve / the more al out of mynde
      Is thys ffortune not I / or infortune
      Though I go lowse / tyed am I with a Lune

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable