In other days he frowned on Eching fort,
To him the young and bold pressed ever near;
In other days on Bludwe he would sport,

While his glad horn for Mordei made good cheer.

In other days he blended mead and ale;
In other days purple and gold he wore;

In other days Gwarthlev-"the Voice of Blame"-
Hero deserving of a truer name-

Had stall-fed steeds, who safely, swiftly bore
Their master out of peril. These now fail.

In other days he turned the ebbing tide,

And bade the flood of war sweep high, spread wide.

XVII.

Light of lights-the sun,

Leader of the day,

First to rise and run

His appointed way,

Crowned with many a ray,

Seeks the British sky;
Sees the flight's dismay,
Sees the Briton fly.

The horn in Eiddin's hall

Had sparkled with the wine,
And thither, at the call
To drink and be divine,

He went, to share the feast
Of reapers, wine and mead;
He drank and so increased
His daring for wild deed.
The reapers sang of war
That lifts its shining wings,
Its shining wings of fire,
Its shields that flutter far.
The bards too sang of war,
Of plumed and crested war;
The song rose ever higher.
Not a shield

Escapes the shock,

To the field

They fiercely flock,

There to fall.

But of all

Who struck on giant Gwrveling,

Whom he would he struck again,
All he struck in grave were lain
Ere the bearers came to bring
To his grave stout Gwrveling.

XVIII.

These gathered from the lands around:
Three chiefs from the Novantine ground;
Five times five hundred men, embattled bands,
Three times three hundred levied from their lands;
Three hundred men of battle, armed in gold,
From Eiddin; then three cuirassed hosts enrolled
By three kings golden-chained; three chiefs beside
With whom three hundred marched in equal pride;
Three of like mark, and jealous each of each,
Fierce in attack and dreadful in the breach,
Would strike a lion dead; with gold they shone.
Three kings came from the Brython, Cynrig one,
And Cynon and Cynrain from Aeron,

To breast the darts the sullen Deivyr throw.
Better than Cynon came from Brython none,
He proved a deadly serpent to the foe.

XIX.

I drank the Mordei's wine and mead;
Spears were many, men prepared
For the banquet, sadly shared,
The solemn feast where eagles feed.
When Cydywal to battle sped,

In the green dawn, he raised a shout
Triumphant over many dead.
Upon the field were strown about
The shields he splintered, tearing spears
Hewn and cast down. His were no fears;

Son of the star-wise Syvno, he

Knew that his death that day should be

By spear or bow, not by sword-blade,

And not a sword his havoc stayed

Or could against his sword a strife sustain.

He gave his own life, took a host;

Blaen Gwynedd knew his ancient boast

Of the brave toilers piled whom he had slain.

xx.

I drank the Mordei's wine and mead,

I drank, and now for that I bleed,
And yield me to the stroke of pain
With yearning throb of high disdain,
That upward pants to strike again.
Thee too the sword that slays me slays.
When danger threatens us, the days
Of evil-doing quail the hand:
Had we withstood we could withstand.
Presýnt was bold, through war's alarm
He thrust his way with doughty arm.

XXI.

To Cattraeth's vale in glittering row
Twice two hundred warriors go;
Every warrior's manly neck

Chains of regal honour deck,

Wreathed in many a golden link :
From the golden cup they drink

Nectar that the bees produce,

Or the grape's extatic juice.

Flush'd with mirth and hope they burn:

But none from Cattraeth's vale return,

First English

Initial.

CANDINAVIAN and Teutonic, the incoming population, allied in race as closely as the Gael and Cymry, were immigrant

from all lands on the other side of the sea opposite Eastern Britain. One of those tribes, who were to blend with one another and with the Celts whom they at first partly displaced, was that which gave afterwards its name to the united people. By this name the people, in later time styled Anglo-Saxons, called themselves. They were the English folk; the language proper to them, formed here by a fusion of dialects and cultivated by their writers as the language of the country, they called English, although in later days some have been taught to call it Anglo-Saxon. It was our first English; and by that name of First English we can simply and sufficiently distinguish it from English of any later time. First English, so developed, was watched over by scholars in the monasteries, and remained for about

1 From the MS. of Cadmon's Paraphrase in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Copied from the fac-similes of the illuminations in the Cadmon MS. published by the Antiquarian Society.

four centuries a fixed language, with some such variety of gender and inflexion as we may still find in modern German.

An aptitude for work in fellowship, and a religious sense of duty, were the qualities by which especially these races became builders of the rising power of the country. Except where there could be a dash of Celtic blood in his family, there was no vivacity of genius in a First English poet. The first and best of these poets, Cadmon, belonged to a corner of Yorkshire-Whitby-where the two races lived in contact with each other. Until the fourteenth century-by which time men of all races in the land had been drawn together in London and elsewhere, and there was no longer a very definite line of division-not one man arose in this country who showed much quickness of fancy or any bold originality of thought, except in the north or west of England, along the line of contact between Celt and Teuton, where men and women of the two races were fellow-citizens, and intermarried. But throughout the land good men there were in plenty, studious men, hard workers, who lived lives of duty for the love of God, and strenuously sought to find and uphold the right, find and cast out the wrong. Cadmon's Paraphrase of Bible story, written A.D. 670-680, will have its place in that section of our Library which is designed to illustrate the course of English religious thought. The heroic strain known by the name of its hero, Beowulf, hardly less ancient, is in more than six thousand lines, and cannot therefore be included among shorter poems. Nearly all the rest of the First English poetry deals with the life of Christ, or with legends of saints, or is otherwise directly religious in its nature. There is a famous collection of it known as the Exeter Book, given by Bishop Leofric, between A.D. 1046 and 1073, to the library of Exeter Cathedral, of which it is still one of the treasures. Another collection is known as the Vercelli Book, because it was discovered in 1823 in a monastery at Vercelli, in the Milanese. First English poetry is without syllabic quantity or rhyme or assonance, but with alliteration; that is to say, in two successive short lines, three chief words-two in the first line and one in the other are made to begin with the same letter. If one of these words has a prefix, the alliteration is with the first letter of the root-word, not that of the prefix. When the chief words begin with vowels the rule is reversed, and the vowels differ. The following short poem from the Exeter Book I have endeavoured to put into modern English with alliteration according to the First English method of

versification.

THE FORTUNES OF MEN.
Full often it falls out,
By Fortune from God,
That a man and a maiden
In this world may marry,
Find cheer in the child

Whom they care for and cherish,
Tenderly tend it,

Until the time comes,

Beyond the first years,

When the young limbs increasing,

One die in war.

THE NEW-BORN CHILD.

From part of the Illustration of the birth of Abel in the MS. of Cadmon, published by the Antiquarian Society.

Grown firm with life's fulness,

Are formed for their work.
Fond father and mother,

So guide it and feed it,

Give gifts to it, clothe it:
God only can know

What lot to its latter days

Life has to bring.

To some that make music

In life's morning hour

Pining days are appointed

Of plaint at the close.

One the wild wolf shall eat,
Hoary haunter of wastes :
His mother shall mourn

The small strength of a man.
One shall sharp hunger slay;
One shall the storms beat down;
One be destroyed by darts,

One shall live losing
The light of his eyes,

Feel blindly with fingers;

And one, lame of foot,

With sinew-wound wearily
Wasteth away,

Musing and mourning,

With death in his mind.

One, failing feathers,

Shall fall from the height

Of the tall forest tree:

Yet he trips as though flying,

Plays proudly in air

Till he reaches the point

Where the woodgrowth is weak;

Life then whirls in his brain,

Bereft of his reason

He sinks to the root,
Falls flat on the ground,
His life fleeting away.
Afoot on the far-ways,
His food in his hand,
One shall go grieving,
And great be his need,
Press dew on the paths
Of the perilous lands

Where the stranger may strike,
Where live none to sustain.
All shun the desolate

For being sad.

DESTROYED FY DATS.

From a First English MS.-Harleian, 603, fol. 2.

U

U

IN GRASP OF THE GALLOWS.

From a First English MS.-Cotton. Claudius, B. IV., fol. 60.

One the great gallows shall Have in its grasp,

Strained in stark agony

Till the soul's stay,

The bone-house, is bloodily

All broken up;

When the harsh raven hacks

Eyes from the head,

The sallow-coated slits

The soulless man.

One shall handle the harp,
At the feet of his hero
Sit and win wealth

From the will of his lord;

Still quickly contriving
The throb of the cords,

The nail nimbly makes music,
Awakes a glad noise,

THE HARPER. Harleian, 603, fol. 55, part f a sketch.

While the heart of the harper
Throbs, hurried by zeal.

One shall find how fierce wild birds,
How falcons are tamed,
Have the hawk on the hand,
Till the rough haggard learns
To be social, he sets

Silver rings on his feet,

And feeds thus in fetters

The feather-proud bird;
The air-flyer flutters

Confined to a perch,

Till the Welsh bird is wrought,
By what's worn and what's done,
To be meek with the master
Who gives him his meat,
And hold to the hands
Of the dwellers in homes.

So the good God of each of us
Governs and shapes,
Above this our earth,
The employments of men;

Divides and disposes,

And deals out to each

Of his privileged people

A portion in life.

Then to God let each gratefully
Give now his thanks,
For his manifold mercies
Apportioned to man.

CHAPTER III.

TRANSITION ENGLISH: FROM THE CONQUEST TO
CHAUCER.-A.D. 1066 TO A.D. 1352.

AFTER the Conquest there was no verse of any note
in Transition English until the reign of John. But
English minds were at work in English fashion,
though the language of their verse and prose was
chiefly Latin, partly French. Liveliest of the Latin
poems is the Brunellus of Nigel Wireker, a pre-
centor in the Benedictine monastery at Canterbury.
It was produced in Henry II.'s reign, and is a re-
forming Churchman's satire upon greed, hypocrisy,
and ignorance, then common among too many of his
brethren. Brunellus, the hero of the poem, is an
åss who goes the round of the religious orders, and
gets also some experience of university life. Nigel
Wireker's Brunellus is a piece of about 3,800 lines,
and therefore not short enough to be completely
translated for this section of our Library; but the
illustration of our Longer Poems, in a later section,
will include an account of its plan, with attempt
at a metrical version of some characteristic passages.
The reign of Henry II. (1154-1189) was a time
of great energy of thought in Europe. The Flemish
Reinaert began, in 1150, the career of Reineke
Fuchs (Reynard the Fox), in popular literature. It
was a poem in which animals were the actors,
but the satire was all levelled from the side of the
people against tyrannies and corruptions that pro-
voked a cry for reform. The old national poem of
Germany, the Nibelungenlied, was shaping itself in
those days. The old Spanish poem of The Cid came
also into life towards the close of that busy twelfth
century. The Troubadours were singing in the
south of Europe, and Germany had like music from
the Suabian Minnesingers. In 1147, in the reign.
of Stephen, a spring of romance had broken out
from among the dryness of chronicle-writing in the
fabulous Latin Chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth,
called the History of the Britons; meaning by
Britons the Cymry, for whom he found a wondrous
line of kings. This brought among us again KING
ARTHUR, of whom till then chiefly the Bretons
of France had preserved the memory.
The great
popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's chronicle, and
the new currency given by it to stories of King
Arthur, were the chief incidents in our literature
at the beginning of the reign of Henry. Geoffrey of
Monmouth's Latin chronicle was abridged, and was
continued in Latin prose; was turned into French
verse by Gaimar; and again turned into French
verse, with much addition to the details about
King Arthur, by Wace, when the chronicle that set
so many pens at work was still but eight years
old. Arthurian romance in these days of its first
expansion was soon rich in tales of love-animal
love and war.

Then Walter Map, a chaplain to King Henry II., and the Englishman of greatest genius in Henry's reign, a man who united lively wit with a profound religious earnestness, blended Arthurian romance with the legend of Joseph of Arimathea and the Holy Graal visible only to the pure in heart. Taking the