Halleck's New English Literature. Reuben Post Halleck
A vision of the cross bearing the inscription, "With this shalt thou conquer," appeared to Constantine before a victorious battle and caused him to send his mother to the Holy Land to discover the true cross. The story of her successful voyage is given in the poem Elene. The miraculous power of the true cross among counterfeits is shown in a way that suggests kinship with the fourteenth century miracle plays. A dead man is brought in contact with the first and the second cross, but the watchers see no divine manifestation until he touches the third cross, when he is restored to life.
Elene and the Dream of the Road, also probably written by Cynewulf, are an Anglo-Saxon apotheosis of the cross. Some of this Cynewulfian poetry is inscribed on the famous Ruthwell cross in Dumfriesshire.
Andreas and Phoenix.—Cynewulf is probably the author of Andreas, an unsigned poem of special excellence and dramatic power. The poem, "a romance of the sea," describes St. Andrew's voyage to Mermedonia to deliver St. Matthew from the savages. The Savior in disguise is the Pilot. The dialogue between him and St. Andrew is specially fine. The saint has all the admiration of a Viking for his unknown Pilot, who stands at the helm in a gale and manages the vessel as he would a thought.
Although the poet tells of a voyage in eastern seas, he is describing the German ocean:—
"Then was sorely troubled,
Sorely wrought the whale-mere. Wallowed there the Horn-fish,
Glode the great deep through; and the gray-backed gull
Slaughter-greedy wheeled. Dark the storm-sun grew,
Waxed the winds up, grinded waves;
Stirred the surges, groaned the cordage,
Wet with breaking sea."[21]
Cynewulf is also the probable author of the Phoenix, which is in part an adaptation of an old Latin poem. The Phoenix is the only Saxon poem that gives us the rich scenery of the South, in place of the stern northern landscape. He thus describes the land where this fabulous bird dwells:—
"Calm and fair this glorious field, flashes there the sunny grove;
Happy is the holt of trees, never withers fruitage there.
Bright are there the blossoms …
In that home the hating foe houses not at all,
* * * * *
Neither sleep nor sadness, nor the sick man's weary bed,
Nor the winter-whirling snow …
… but the liquid streamlets,
Wonderfully beautiful, from their wells upspringing,
Softly lap the land with their lovely floods."[22]
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF ANGLO-SAXON POETRY
Martial Spirit.—The love of war is very marked in Anglo-Saxon poetry. This characteristic might have been expected in the songs of a race that had withstood the well-nigh all-conquering arm of the vast Roman Empire.
Our study of Beowulf has already shown the intensity of the martial spirit in heathen times. These lines from the Fight at Finnsburg, dating from about the same time as Beowulf, have only the flash of the sword to lighten their gloom. They introduce the raven, for whom the Saxon felt it his duty to provide food on the battlefield:—
" … hraefen wandrode sweart and sealo-br=un; swurd-l=eoma st=od swylce eal Finns-buruh f=yrenu w=aere."
… the raven wandered
Swart and sallow-brown; the sword-flash stood
As if all Finnsburg were afire.
The love of war is almost as marked in the Christian poetry. There are vivid pictures of battle against the heathen and the enemies of God, as shown by the following selection from one of the poems of the Caedmonian cycle:—
"Helmeted men went from the holy burgh,
At the first reddening of dawn, to fight:
Loud stormed the din of shields.
For that rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood,
And the black raven, slaughter-greedy bird."[23]
Judith, a fragment of a religious poem, is aflame with the spirit of war. One of its lines tells how a bird of prey—
"Sang with its horny beak the song of war."
This very line aptly characterizes one of the emphatic qualities of
Anglo-Saxon poetry.
The poems often describe battle as if it were an enjoyable game. They mention the "Play of the spear" and speak of "putting to sleep with the sword," as if the din of war were in their ears a slumber melody.
One of the latest of Anglo-Saxon poems, The Battle of Brunanburh, 937, is a famous example of war poetry. We quote a few lines from Tennyson's excellent translation:—
"Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grindstone,
Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before us.
* * * * *
Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke
Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf
Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers."
Love of the Sea.—The Anglo-Saxon fondness for the sea has been noted, together with the fact that this characteristic has been transmitted to the more recent English poetry. Our forefathers rank among the best seamen that the world has ever known. Had they not loved to dare an unknown sea, English literature might not have existed, and the sun might never have risen on any English flag.
The scop sings thus of Beowulf's adventure on the North Sea:—
"Swoln were the surges, of storms 'twas the coldest,
Dark grew the night, and northern the wind,
Rattling and roaring, rough were the billows."[24]
In the Seafarer, the scop also sings:—
"My mind now is set,
My heart's thought, on wide waters,
The home of the whale;
It wanders away
Beyond limits of land.
* * * * *
And stirs the mind's longing
To travel the way that is trackless."[25]
In the Andreas, the poet speaks of the ship in one of the most charming of Saxon similes:—
"Foaming Ocean beats our steed: full of speed this boat is;
Fares along foam-throated, flieth on the wave,
Likest to a bird."[26]
Some of the most striking Saxon epithets are applied to the sea. We may instance such a compound as =ar-ge-bland (=ar, "oar"; blendan, "to blend"), which conveys the idea of the companionship of the oar with the sea. From this compound, modern poets have borrowed their "oar-disturbéd sea," "oaréd sea," "oar-blending sea," and "oar-wedded sea." The Anglo-Saxon poets call the sun rising or setting in the sea the mere-candel. In Beowulf, mere-str=aeta, "sea-streets," are spoken of as if they were the easily traversed avenues of a town.
Figures of Rhetoric.—A special characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry is the rarity of similes. In Homer they are frequent, but Anglo-Saxon verse is too abrupt and rapid in the succession of images to employ the expanded simile. The long poem of Beowulf contains only five similes, and these are of the shorter kind. Two of them, the comparison of the light in Grendel's dwelling to the beams of the sun, and of a vessel to a flying bird, have been given in the original Anglo-Saxon on pages 16, 17. Other similes compare the light from Grendel's eyes to a flame, and the nails on his fingers to steel: while the most complete