ascribed to him were put into his mouth, and so vivid was the dream that when he awoke he could remember every detail:
Now shall we praise the Warden of Heaven, might of the Master and his manifold thought
The nine lines of this hymn he recited to his companions, who brought him into the presence of abbess. Here in the company of many learned men, he told of the vision and sang his hymn. They told him some portion of the sacred history and asked him to render it in song. Next morning he returned and through the same divine inspiration he was able to render what had been told him in excellent verse. So the servitor was taken into the company of learners, where he received instruction in the sacred stories. And he converted into sweetest song all things he could learn by hearing. His theme was the creation of the world and the whole story of Genesis and of the sojourn of Israel people in Egypt and their entrance into the Promised Land. He sang also of Christ s life and passion, of the coming of the Holy Chost and of the apostles, of the terror of the judgement and of hell. Many others made songs after, but none could equal him, for he learned not of man, but through divine inspiration.centuries after the death of Caedmon and his biographer Bede, an Old English manuscript was discovered which contained poetic versions of large parts of the books of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel. Parts of the poems are very dull; other parts are intensely dramatic, such as the account, in Genesis, of the fall of Satan and his angels. In Exodus, the story of the passage through the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptians is told with great vigor and imagination.style of these Biblical paraphrases is often heroic, like Beowulf and the battle pieces in the Chronicle.leading characteristic of Old English versification is the use of alliteration instead of rime. Each line has a break in the middle and contains four stresses, or accents. Two or three of the accented syllables begin with the same consonant, or with the same vowel. The number of syllables in a line varies; there must be four stressed syllables, but there may be any number of unstressed syllables.English poetic style is further marked by the frequent use of what are called Kennings raquo ;, or metaphors, in which the name of the thing is replaced by a compound word or phrase describing one of its qualities. Thus the King is called the ring giver raquo ;; the sea is the whale s road or the gannet s bath .Alfred, a famous monarch, who ruled Wessex in the ninth century was not only a statesman and military genius who warred successfully on the Danes and firmly established himself as the King of all England, but also a man remembered for his great services to English learning. He wanted to develop a truly national spirit. The literature and learning flourished brilliantly in the north. Much was destroyed by the Danes later and all England seemed about to lapse into barbarism. Alfred was a zealous patron of learning, he established a court school and brought to it British and foreign scholars. Alfred found time, in spite of the perplexing problems of his heroic life, to become a humble learner himself, to arouse the spirit of learning in others, and to establish schools. He gathered about him a group of scholars, and they busily translated into English tongue many books of history, philosophy and geography. He himself made translations of such works as the Consolations of Philosophy by Roman statesmen, The History of the World: Pastoral Care by Pope Gregory the Great.Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf or Cynwulf who lived in the 8th century is thought to have been a Northumbrian minstrel. Historians attribute to him such works as Christ raquo ;, the epic of Salvation, The Tales of the Apostles (stories of the travels and missionary work of the apostles), Helene (the story of the finding of the true Cross by Helena, mother of Constantine and Juliana, a saint's legend) .is an outline of the earliest English literature. The language is strange, though a little study of it reveals that it is indeed intimately related to the language that is spoken today. The versification is not less strange. But the verse is heroic, with a sturdy rhythm that suited those strong, simple men, the pioneers of a great race. Both because of its grave beauty and because this is the foundation on which English literature has been built, students should know something about this fine old epic. To understand the spirit that permeates English literature one needs to understand the spirit of Beowulf. This noble epic was the first great poem in English. The world today may need more than ever the indomitable spirit of service and hatred of cruelty and tyranny that can be found in Beowulf s words as he went forth to his last battle:
" I have lived throug...
