Richard Rolle of Hampole

Richard Rolle (c. 1300–1349), born at Thornton Dale in Yorkshire, left Oxford without a degree to live as a hermit, and became the most widely read English mystic of the fourteenth century. He wrote chiefly in Latin, notably the Incendium Amoris, but also composed English prose treatises and lyrics for devout readers, and an English commentary on the Psalter.

He died in 1349, reputedly at the Cistercian nunnery of Hampole near Doncaster, and was venerated locally as a saint. The lyric printed here, in his northern Middle English, is the only piece by him in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917); its spelling is kept as the editors give it, with thorn (þ) and yogh (ȝ) restored.