London, British Library, Harley MS. 912 (England, s. xiv med./ex.) is a two-volume manuscript of complex collation and content, including summae of British mendicants, excerpts of historical and geographical descriptions, and a set of elaborate indexes. Its contents point to its probable intended purpose: a preacher’s technical reference collection assembled for personal consultation. Just over half of the manuscript consists of exempla and fables, brief florilegia, and smatterings of verse, many of which are otherwise unattested—nearly all in Latin with a handful of interpolations in Middle English or French. This article focuses on three of these vernacular interpolations: the previously unrecorded short poems Hylke day y synned and Tere ast tere a tort coueyte (a French analogue of Erþe toc of erþe), and a hitherto unreported version of Worldes blis wend away. These poems, all embedded in sermon exempla, reveal individualized pastoral predilections and attitudes towards the vernacular. Considered alongside the book’s index of verse, they reveal that the Harley 912 scribe-compiler’s sorting and use of poetry is highly specific: vernacular verses serve as components of brief stories or lessons suitable for preaching (far from an unusual practice among later medieval preachers), but here with an emphasis on lessons in extremis. In this manuscript, the vernacular is for the dying and signals partial or merely earthly knowledge.