Poema Morale begins in the voice of an old man who regrets his sinful, “worthless” life, but the voice is soon succeeded by that of a preacher and moralist, who offers remonstrances and counsel to every Christian who dwells in the fallen state of mankind. It is a long poem filled with warnings that sometimes seem repetitive and rambling. A thoughtful structure does exist, however, becoming clear when the Jesus scribe’s indicators are closely attended to. Punctuation occurs in nearly every line, suggesting a preacher’s cadence of oral delivery, in long lines with caesuras, rhyming in couplets and grouped like paragraphs. Composed before 1200, Poema Morale exemplifies the metrical style that becomes something of a standard for many of the thirteenth-century poets represented in Jesus 29. It and several of the later poems are composed and copied in long lines that balance phrases and pauses. As Pearsall notes, the verses are meant to be “read aloud with emphatic delivery” (Old and Middle English Poetry, p. 96).

The spiritually urgent, compellingly logical argument of Poema Morale is structured as follows:

• Regrets in old age (the pivotal last moment for redemption by repentance and confession)
• The need to be mindful of one’s own state (repeating the verb me bithenchen, lines 6, 8, 34)
• The difficult psychology of acknowledging one’s own sin while beset with a constant drive to sin, and bearing this painful knowledge under God’s all-knowing eye
• Doomsday described (when self-knowledge will becomes one’s own damnation)
• Hell and its pains described
• Another reminder to be mindful (repeating, again, the verb me bithenchen, lines 322, 330)
• Heaven and its joys described
• A climax that imagines the beholding of God in heaven

Adam’s Fall is a prevailing theme because Adam brought the triple curse of aging, disease, and death to mankind. The old man at death’s door (the brink) must repent and confess, but he is struck with despair at the enormity of his transgressions. Poema Morale’s poetics of mindfulness offers the crucial remedy for how to face this dilemma before time is up. The vision offered by the speaker is pessimistic and pain-filled, fraught with the predicament of carrying on in life while bearing an awareness of personal sin and the dire consequences, yet he offers hope and a recourse: one may trade worldly wealth for good deeds, prayers, and alms, which will build the soul’s treasure in heaven — accruing a deposit of good, so to speak, in the next world. A quantifying mentality pervades the poet’s outlook on personal salvation; he likes to emphasize how one’s rewards in heaven shall be numbered according to one’s merits.

The title Poema Morale was given to the work by Frederick Furnivall in 1862. Despite occasional efforts to anglicize it (e.g., A Moral Ode), the title holds firm as the consensus choice, comparable to how Cursor Mundi remains the standard title for another Middle English text. Contrarily, Betty Hill argued against Furnivall’s title and assigned it the name Conduct of Life, a title she felt was better suited for a homiletic sermon (“The Twelfth-Century Conduct of Life,” pp. 126–28). While others have added to Hill’s discussion of genre, they all have upheld the older title. Treharne concurs that Poema Morale is more a “versified homily than poetry” (p. 337), while Louis, who agrees it is a “versified sermon,” notes its poetic, aesthetic qualities. The liveliness of Poema Morale, he observes, “lies not so much in its commonplace content as in the vigor and originality of the manner in which it is expressed. The first person point of view gives the poem a sincerity and immediacy of attitude, while the vividness of its imagery gives its message a forceful impact” (MWME, 9:3008).

The popularity of the poem is attested by its survival in seven manuscript copies. The editorial history is complex. One critical edition written in German exists (Lewin, ed., Das mittelenglische Poema Morale, (1881)), but it was made before discovery of the McClean manuscript (Paues, “A Newly Discovered Manuscript”; and Hill, “A Manuscript from Nuneaton”). Numerous editions from single manuscripts have been created over time. The present edition, based on Jesus 29, does not provide comparative readings among the manuscripts. For such analysis, see especially Hill, “The Twelfth-Century Conduct of Life”; and Morris-Specimens, pp. 350–56; and for a listing of editions, see DIMEV 2113. The Cambridge manuscript, TCC, MS B.14.52, may be viewed digitally at https://mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/Manuscript/B.14.52(Opens in a new tab or window). In it and other copies of Poema Morale, the markers of “stanza” structure and oral delivery found in Jesus 29 (capitals and punctuation) do not appear; see Fein, “Designing English,” p. 55.

[Fols. 169r–174v. NIMEV 1272. DIMEV 2113. Louis, MWME, 9:3007–08, 3378 [204]. Quire: 3. Meter: 390 lines rhyming in couplets, seven stresses per line (“Septenarius, or fourteener, in imitation of the Latin trochaic tetrameter catalectic” (Louis, MWME, 9:3007)). Layout: Long lines, most with internal punctuation. Colored capitals are treated in this edition as indicators of stanza-like groupings (usually of 6 or 8 lines). Editions from MS Jesus 29: Morris, pp. 58–71; Morris-Specimens, pp. 194–220, 350–56. Six other MSS: Oxford, BodL, MS Digby 4, fols. 97r–110v; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 123, fols. 115r–120r; Cambridge, TCC, MS B.14.52, fols. 2r–9v; London, BL, MS Egerton 613, fols. 7r–12v; London, BL, MS Egerton 613, fols. 64r–70v; London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 487, fols. 59v–65r. Translations: Furnivall, ed., Early English Poems, pp. x–xii (from Egerton); Thomas, ed. and trans., “Poema Morale” (from TCC).]