The Example of Vertu The Example of Virtue — Story, Setting & Ideas

The Dream Vision and Its Framing

The poem begins with a prologue and a dream: Youth meets Discretion in a meadow. The table of contents lists fourteen chapters, each with a clear allegorical step: Youth sails over the “daungerous passage of vayne glorye,” arrives at an island belonging to Hardynes, Sapyence, Fortune, and Nature, and later pleads before Justice. The opening excerpt does not include the dream's inception, but the chapter titles reveal a systematic progression from moral instruction to combat—Youth fights a three-headed dragon before marrying Clennes. The dream frame situates the entire narrative as a vision, a common medieval device that allows for symbolic interpretation. Readers should note how the poem's structure mirrors a pilgrimage or quest, with each chapter marking a stage of moral development.

The Perilous Bridge and the Water of Vanity

In the middle excerpt, Youth is led by Sapience and Discretion to a river that “ebbed and flowed at every tyde.” Across it lies a castle of marble and crystal, but access is only by a bridge “not half so brode as a hous rydge.” Clennes appears on the far side, declaring that the world is but a vanity, like the water. The bridge is inscribed: “No man this brydge may ouer go / But he be pure without neglygence / And stedfast in goddes byleue also.” Youth quakes with fear, and the crossing is tense. This passage establishes a central test: the narrow bridge represents moral purity and faith. The water's turbulence suggests worldly temptation. Readers should observe how the allegory literalizes spiritual danger—the bridge's narrowness and the warning text make the stakes explicit.

The King of Love: A Moralized Portrait

After crossing, Youth enters a hall paved with precious stones, where the King of Love sits. The description is striking: he is “gyrde with wylowes,” blind, naked, with two large wings, a dart in his right hand, a burning torch in his left, a bottle around his neck, one leg armed and the other naked. Sapience explains each element: the willow girdle signifies stability; blindness means love sees no faults; nakedness shows love desires only the person; wings indicate the mind flies to the beloved; the dart wounds the heart; the torch burns with desire; the bottle holds mercy; the armed leg defends right love; the naked leg betokens charity. This moralization is a key feature of the poem—abstract concepts are embodied and then glossed. Readers should note how Hawes uses visual detail to teach, turning the King into a diagram of virtuous love.

The Later Excerpts and the Poem's Conclusion

The later excerpts are not provided in full, but the table of contents indicates that after the marriage of Vertu and Clennes, an angel shows them hell and its divisions, and then Vertu claims his inheritance, with angels and saints bringing them to heaven. The poem ends with a colophon naming Stephen Hawes as a groom of the chamber of Henry VII, dating the work to the nineteenth year of his reign (1509). The final chapters thus move from earthly trial to celestial reward, completing the allegorical arc. Readers should expect a shift from the perilous journey to a vision of the afterlife, reinforcing the poem's didactic purpose. The colophon grounds the work in a specific courtly context, reminding us that Hawes wrote for a royal audience.

Hawes's poem rewards attention to its symbolic details: the narrow bridge, the King of Love's attributes, and the progression from dream to heaven. Readers may find it useful to track how each allegorical figure—Discretion, Sapience, Clennes—functions as both character and concept. The poem's structure, with its chapter summaries and moralizations, invites a slow, reflective reading that connects each image to its spiritual meaning.

The rain blurred the window as Youth groped across that perilous bridge, blindfolded Love waiting beyond, and I found myself wondering how differently that journey reads once the blindfold comes off—how love’s wings feel heavier with years. That thought carried me, almost by accident, to The Years Between — Themes and Context, where the same ache simply wears another name.