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54 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES<br />

learned circles. Thus, for instance, a serious poem<br />

written in English by an anonymous author of the<br />

fourteenth or fifteenth century, concludes with eight<br />

prettily rhymed<br />

Latin verses :<br />

Omnia terrena,<br />

Per vices sunt aliena :<br />

Nescio sunt cujus,<br />

Mea nunc, eras hujus et hujus.<br />

Die, homo, quid speres,<br />

Si mundo totus adheres;<br />

Nulla tecum feres,<br />

Licet tu solus haberes.<br />

Here,<br />

two couplets are followed by<br />

four successive<br />

rhymes ; all the words are bi-syllabic.<br />

An English<br />

" Virelai " shows similar rhymes. It is<br />

probably from the pen of Chaucer, and is<br />

forty lines<br />

long. We here quote eight lines from the middle,<br />

which will suffice to show the abundance of rhymes :<br />

Infortunate<br />

Is soo my fate,<br />

That (wote ye whate ?)<br />

Out of mesure<br />

My<br />

life I hate :<br />

Thus desperate,<br />

In suche pore estate<br />

Do I endure.<br />

The word "mesure"' (now mea'sure) resembles the<br />

French word in sound ;<br />

for the Normans introduced it<br />

\<br />

from France. With the accent on the last syllable, it<br />

rhymes to the word " endure."<br />

" Whate " (our<br />

modern "what")<br />

is wedded to five other rhymed<br />

verses, for in eight lines we discover no fewer than six<br />

rhymes on " ate," " whate " being one of them.

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