Poetry

"Poetry is simply the most delightful and perfect form of utterance that words can reach".

Old English Poetry

The Angles, Saxons and Jutes, while as yet they were heathen and lived on the Continent, had songs and legends, heroic and stirring in character, sung to the harp by the minstrel and harpers orally handed down from one generation to another. They brought with them these songs and legends to England and they were later written down. And as many of them were set down by monks after the introduction of Christianity by St. Augustine from 597, there is a blend of Christian and pagan sentiment.

Of these poems which have their origin in the Teutonic songs and legends Beowulf is the most important. It is an epic of 3,200 lines dealing with the heroic exploits of Beowulf against a terrible monster called Grendel whom he kills; later he kills Grendel's mother who sought vengeance for the death of her son. For these heroic exploits he is made the King of the Geats and after a prosperous regin of about forty years slays a dragon which ravaged his land but is mortally wounded. The poem concludes with the funeral ceremonies in honour of the great hero. "Search the literatures of the world, and you will find no other such picture of a brave man's death."

The following poems belong to the Old English Period:

• Widsith (the far traveller) is a poem of 150 lines in which a traveller recounts the places and illustrious people he visited.
• Waldere, two epic fragments, 32 lines and 31 lines respectively, describing the exploits of Walter of Aquilaine.
• The Fight at Finnsburh is a fragment of 48 lines finely describing the fighting at Finnsburth.
• Deor's Lament, a lyric of 42 lines in which Deor, a bard, laments his eclipse by Heorrenda, a river scop.
• The Wanderer, a poem of 115 lines, tells of the wanderings of a man who has lost his lord.
• The Seafarer, 110 lines, discusses the miseries and the attractions of life at sea.
• The Wife's Lament is the story of a banished wife's plaintive lament for her estranged husband.
• The Battle of Maldon, an epic fragment, describes the battle between the English and the Northmen which took place in 993.
• The Ruin is a series of laments over the ruins of a Roman settlement which was devastated by the Saxons.

The Christening of the Anglo-Saxon had more far reaching effects on their literature than the interpolation of Christian elements into pagan heroic poems. By the eighth century the technique of heroic poetry was applied to purely Christian themes. Gradually the Anglo-Saxons broke away from their pagan origin and produced a substantial body of religious poetry, paving the way for a new development in English poetry. Earlier their poetry was full of war and sea. With the introduction of Christianity a new spirit entered into English poetry. Christianity mellowed manners. The old spirit did not die, But it was transformed by the new. Stopford A. Brooke aptly remarks, "The war spirit did not decay, but into the song steals a soften element. The fatalism is modified by the faith that the fate is the will of a good God. The sorrow is not less, but it is relieved by an outlook of joy. The triumph over enemies is not less, but even more exulting, for it is the triumph of God over His foes that is sung by Caedmon and Cynewolf. Nor is the imaginative delight in legends and in the supernatural less. But it is now found in the legends of the saints, in the miracles and visions of angels that Baeda tells of the Christian heroes, in fantastic allegories of spiritual things, like the poems of the phoenix and the whale."

Two names are connected with this Christian poetry - Caedmon and Cynewuf. Caedmon, a poet of the seventh century, was a simple, unlettered man, a cowherd employed by the monastery at Whitby. He bacame a poet, as Bede says, after a visit by an angel. One night he fell asleep among the cattle and dreamed that an angel came to him and commanded him to sign about the beginning of created things. And he fashioned a song about the Creation which he remembered when he woke up. He then became a monk and made many more songs. The poems ascribed to Caedmon are Christ and Satan, Exodus, Genesis. Genesis is in two parts - Genesis A and Genesis B. David Daiches says that 'the poetic vigour and dramatic detail of Genesis B is remarkable; the poem is a rudimentary paradise Lost and, indeed, its finest passages can bear comparison with parts of Milton's epic'. Judith also is attributed to the school of Caedmon. It is a dramatic epic fragment of 350 lines and is based on a book of the Old Testament.

Caedmon's influence on his successors was very great. Indeed, he founded a new school of religious poetry, and his verse served as a model for subsequent poets. Cynewulf, a poet of the early ninth century, is in the line of succession from Caedmon. Four poems contain the signature of Cynewulf in runic characters - Juliana, Elene, Christ and The Fates of the Apostles. Some unsigned poems attributed to Cynewulf are Andreas, Guthlac, The Phoenix and The Dream of the Rood. According to Otis and Needleman "the Dream of the Rood" is probably the noblest and most imaginative of all Anglo - Saxon poems. Cynewulf's poems are far superior to those of Caedmon. "There is greater power of expression, surer technique and real descriptive powers. The ideas are broader and deeper, and a certain lyrical quality is found in them".

"Old English produced a rich body of poetry, all in Northumbrian dialect. Old English poetic style has a great charm. It is marked by leisurely movement, repetition of ideas and words, alliteration and an abundant use of compounds and synonyms".