The truth and I were both here cast
   Together, and we do
   Lie arm in arm, and so hold fast
   Each other, this is true.

   Who now dare say we throw away
   Our goods or liberty,
   When God’s most holy Word doth say
   We gain thus much thereby?”

It will be seen that though Bunyan’s verses are certainly not high-class poetry, they are very far removed from doggerel.  Nothing indeed that Bunyan ever wrote, however rugged the rhymes and limping the metre, can be so stigmatized.  The rude scribblings on the margins of the copy of the “Book of Martyrs,” which bears Bunyan’s signature on the title-pages, though regarded by Southey as “undoubtedly” his, certainly came from a later and must less instructed pen.  And as he advanced in his literary career, his claim to the title of a poet, though never of the highest, was much strengthened.  The verses which diversify the narrative in the Second Part of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” are decidedly superior to those in the First Part, and some are of high excellence.  Who is ignorant of the charming little song of the Shepherd Boy in the Valley of Humiliation, “in very mean clothes, but with a very fresh and well-favoured countenance, and wearing more of the herb called Heartsease in his bosom than he that is clad in silk and velvet?”—­

   “He that is down need fear no fall;
   He that is low, no pride;
   He that is humble, ever shall
   Have God to be his guide.

   I am content with what I have,
   Little be it or much,
   And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
   Because Thou savest such.

   Fulness to such a burden is
   That go on Pilgrimage,
   Here little, and hereafter Bliss
   Is best from age to age.”

Bunyan reaches a still higher flight in Valiant-for-Truth’s song, later on, the Shakesperian ring of which recalls Amiens’ in “As You Like It,”

   “Under the greenwood tree,
   Who loves to lie with me. . . 
   Come hither, come hither,”

and has led some to question whether it can be Bunyan’s own.  The resemblance, as Mr. Froude remarks, is “too near to be accidental.”  “Perhaps he may have heard the lines, and the rhymes may have clung to him without his knowing whence they came.”

   “Who would true Valour see,
   Let him come hither,
   One here will constant be,
   Come wind, come weather. 
   There’s no discouragement
   Shall make him once relent
   His first avowed intent
   To be a Pilgrim.

   Who so beset him round
   With dismal stories,
   Do but themselves confound
   His strength the more is. 
   No lion can him fright,
   He’ll with a giant fight,
   But he will have a right
   To be a Pilgrim.

   Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
   Can daunt his spirit,
   He knows he at the end
   Shall life inherit. 
   Then fancies fly away
   He’ll fear not what men say,
   He’ll labour night and day
   To be a Pilgrim.”