On Serving Christ follows Antiphon of Saint Thomas the Martyr, which serves as its choral introit. This poem venerates Thomas Becket as equal to biblical and Roman martyrs, selecting Saints Peter, Lawrence, and John the Baptist as stellar exemplars of passive suffering in the face of persecution. They were each heroic because they followed God’s will actively and without resistance to martyrdom. An exceptional feature of On Serving Christ is how its metrical form is fashioned specifically to convey a heroic message. As Pearsall notes, it is composed “in an irregular long alliterative line, rhyming in laisses of varied length in imitation of the Anglo-Norman” (Old and Middle English Poetry, p. 96). Although seldom recognized as such, it is an alliterative poem in early Middle English. It may be noted that Layamon’s long-line alliterative Brut survives in MS Cotton Caligula A.ix (see Laȝamon, Brut, ed. and trans. Barron and Weinberg). Evaluated by date and style, On Serving Christ serves as a bridge between Layamon and the late-thirteenth-/early-fourteenth-century Harley lyrics and William of Palerne, earliest of the fourteenth-century unrhymed long-line alliterative romances, dated between 1335 and 1361 (Bunt, ed., William of Palerne, p. 15).

A second metrical feature of On Serving Christ is of equal interest. Its lines are grouped by assonanced rhyme, creating monorhyming “stanzas” of irregular length, properly termed laisses because they are the English equivalent of the standard verse form of French chansons de geste like The Song of Roland, which survives in its best form in Anglo-Norman. Although, at seventy-eight lines, On Serving Christ is not a very long poem, its meter deploys two epic modes: the ancient English alliterative line revived by Layamon to write of Arthur, and the laisse used by Old French poets to write of Charlemagne.

Notably, The Passion of Jesus Christ in English (art. 1), which opens Jesus 29, starts off by declaring that it will speak of Jesus and his twelve disciples, not of Charlemagne and his twelve peers (lines 3–4). By creating an innovative, hybrid epic meter, the poet of On Serving Christ makes a similar claim by stylistic means. His heroes are four martyrs who defended Holy Church: two of the Bible, one of the early Church, and one of England. Opening with Antiphon of Saint Thomas the Martyr in English, a combination of epic meter, choral introit, and saintly procession heaps glory on the English saint. Joined with Saints Peter, Lawrence, and John the Baptist, Thomas is made all the greater by deployment of a powerful new verse form.

[Fols. 185v–187r. NIMEV 4162. DIMEV 6672. Louis, MWME, 9:3041, 3399 [371]. Quire: 4. Meter: 78 alliterative long lines, with most marked with caesuras, in nine monorhyming stanzas of variable length (8, 10, 6, 8, 10, 8, 6, 8, 14). The form is a hybrid of English alliterative verse and the French laisse. Layout: Long lines with medial and end punctuation. A colored capital marks the beginning of each stanza. Edition: Morris, pp. 90–92. Other MSS: None.]