hell, and the bliss of the heavenly kingdom he made many poems;
and moreover, many others concerning divine benefits and judgements;
in all which he sought to wean men from the love of sin, and to
stimulate them to the enjoyment and pursuit of good action.

It happens that we still possess some poems which answer more or less
to this description; but they are all of later date and are only known
from copies written in the Southern dialect of Wessex; and, as the
original Northumbrian text has unfortunately perished, we have no
means of knowing to what extent they represent Cædmon's work. It is
possible that they preserve some of it in a more or less close form of
translation, but we cannot verify this possibility. It has been
ascertained, on the other hand, that a certain portion (but by no
means all) of these poems is adapted, with but slight change,
from an original poem written in the Old Saxon of the continent.

Nevertheless, it so happens that a short hymn of nine lines has been
preserved nearly in the original form, as Cædmon dictated it; and it
corresponds closely with Beda's Latin version. It is found at the end
of the Cambridge MS. of Beda's _Historia Ecclesiastica_ in the
following form:

Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard,
metudæs maecti end his modgidanc,
uerc uuldurfadur; sue he uundra gihuaes,
eci Dryctin, or astelidæ.
He aerist scop aelda barnum
heben til hrofe, haleg scepen[d].
Tha middungeard moncynnæs uard,
eci Dryctin, æfter tiadæ