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richly caparisoned charger as the reward of prowess. This points at least to a youth of some adventure, and would explain also the exactitude of his knowledge concerning war and all its pomp and circumstance. But Cynewulf has not only the soldier's enthusiasm for warlike deeds. He speaks, too, with all a sailor's zest of the sea. No inland man could have written his poetry, or could so have sung as he did of the ocean, of its storm and calm, of its power and rage, of its waves dancing in the sunlight, of its multitudinous billows rolling into space under the moonbeams. In a word, he was a poet, with all a poet's imagination and close observation of what he saw and heard on sea and land; with all a poet's love of beauty-the beauty of the world, the splendour of art, the loveliness of woman, the glory of manhood; with all a poet's eye, too, for colour and with all a poet's passion for light. To him the earth is all dressed in green. "In guard of God stands the green plain decked with many streams and bright flowers." It is the white hands of Christ that are pierced with nails. The iron nails shine like stars or glitter like jewels. Christ Himself is "the sun burst" out of the East, flooding the world with day. His presence is always attested by glory of light. In his later poems, brooding, tender, poignant, vivid, in which he strives to disclose to us the kingdoms of life and death, to pierce the darkness of heathenism with the Christian's lyric joy, and to invest the lives of his hearers with the heaven which lies habitually about his own soul, there is still an echo of the careless heroic days of youth. But the higher moods of

his later life were not won without a period of storm and stress in which his early song-craft passes from him. There came a time-he tells us himself-when the careless happiness of youth found an abrupt end, like "the hasting waves, like the storm which ends in silence." He is in bitterest sorrow, convinced of sin, fearful of the wrath of God, so full of remorse for the careless past that his song-craft leaves him. He is no more a poet. Then he wins hope again with a vision of the redeeming power of the cross of Christ and the craft of song returns. "God Himself," he says, unlocked the power of poetry in my breast." And all the old subjects live again in his pages-battle and voyage, mead-hall and race-course, jewels and fair women but subordinated to his higher purpose, heightened and transfigured by the vision of the eternal behind the temporal. And so he sings of the "Dream of the Holy Rood," "Juliana," Elene," "Andreas,' "Guthlac," the "Fates of the Apostles," and "The Christ."

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It is of this last poem especially that I wish to speak to you.

I confess that when I read it for the first time some years ago, in the full text published by Mr. Gollancz, I was astonished at the lofty sublimity and power of this great Christian epic of the Northern Church in the eighth century; this noble story of our salvation with its trumpet-tongued passages of joy and piety; its pathetic wailing lyrics of passionate prayer and supplication; its vivid dramatic pictures; its rushing choric outbursts of praise and victory.

The story is divided into three main pieces, dealing respectively with the Nativity of Christ, His Ascension, and the Doomsday.

I.

I have said that Cynewulf exhibits in his poetry very considerable familiarity with liturgical literature. This knowledge is very plainly shown in the first section of his "Christ." Its historic basis, indeed, is to be found in the public offices of the Church, as arranged for the Advent season, with their proper psalms, lessons, responds, hymns, and prayers, and especially upon the textual structure of the pre-Christmas antiphons"the seven greater O's" as they have been calledthose solemn invocations to the Advent Christ, addressed under one or other of His scriptural titles: (i.) O Sapientia! (ii.) O Adona?! (iii.) O Radix Jesse! (iv.) O Clavis David! (v.) O Oriens! (vi.) O Rex Gentium! (vii.) O Emmanuel! which were sung in the churches day by day at vespers in the week preceding Christmas." There can be little doubt indeed to any careful student of this first passus of Cynewulf's poem, that its writer, thrilled by the solemn chanting of these Latin antiphons and inspired by the devout spirit of their contents, desires to reproduce them in English. He abridges, expands, suppresses, transposes, interpolates, just as his genius may dictate, but the liturgical basis is never forgotten. The great Advent message of the Church is clearly told. The story alternates between joy and exultation over the fulness of Christ's manifestation, and intense longing that, as the great Redeemer, He

will liberate the sinner from the thraldom of his sin, and as the Prince of Glory He will build up His Church in the most Holy Faith.

The poem opens with an invocation to Christa variation of the Antiphon "O Rex Gentium "—“O King and desire of all nations, Thou chief corner-stone who makest two to be one; come Thou and save man whom Thou formedst from the clay!" It is thus Englished by Cynewulf:

"O King! Thou art the wall-stone,
which of old the workman
from their work rejected!
Well it Thee beseemeth
that Thou hold the headship
of this Hall of glory,
and should'st join together
With a fastening firm
the broad-spaced walls
of the flint unbreakable
all fitly framed together;
that among earth's dwellers

all with sight of eyes

may for ever wonder;

O Prince of glory!

now through skill and wisdom

manifest Thy handiwork,

true-fast, and firm-set

In sovran splendour."

Then follows a paraphrase of the Antiphon "O clavis David!" a prayer to the Christ as the Maker and Craftsman of the world, who holds the keys of Life and Death, to have pity upon His people and to save

B

them from the Baleful one, the slayer of the mind, the Scather of Men. "We speak these words in very need "-cries the poet in his own person-" we who in prison yearn for the sunlight, who in abject plight must needs depart to this narrow shore bereft of Fatherland."

8

Then there follows what we may well call a dramatic dialogue -the first dawning so to say in our literature of the Mystery Play and the sequent English drama-in which the characters Mary the Virgin, and Joseph with the children of Jerusalem as chorus, placed in a scenic environment prepared for their entrance, sing to one another of the Incarnation of Christ and its meaning.

"Hail! from the sovran splendour-glory Thou of women,
Loveliest of maidens-in all the realms of earth,

That the ocean Rovers-ever hearkened speech of—
Tell to us the mystery-that came to thee from heaven."

And the Virgin answers—

"What is now the wonder-at the which ye gaze
Making here your moan-mournfully awailing
Children ye of Salem-daughters too of Solima
Verily to men-ward-the mystery is not known

But gone is the guilt of Eve-passed the curse of Adam
Praise to lowliest woman-hope is won for man

And joy for the host of angels-and for the Father of Truth
for ever."

Then the chorus seems to break into the dialogue with a variant of the antiphon, O oriens splendor lucis, a little lyric which is probably one of the earliest of English Christmas carols

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