Before selecting some of Chaucer's religious verses, however, I must speak of two or three poems by other writers.
The first of these is _The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman_,--a poem of great influence in the same direction as the writings of Wycliffe.

It is a vision and an allegory, wherein the vices of the time, especially those of the clergy, are unsparingly dealt with.
Towards the close it loses itself in a metaphysical allegory concerning Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.[17] I do not find much poetry in it.

There is more, to my mind, in another poem, written some thirty or forty years later, the author of which is unknown, perhaps because he was an imitator of William Langland, the author of the _Vision_.

It is called _Pierce the Plough-man's Crede_.

Both are written after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxon poetry, and not after the fashion of the Anglo-Norman, of which distinction a little more presently.