composition." The other Germans are usually so taken up with technical
and mechanical questions that they leave no room for æsthetic
considerations. Whether Cynewulf wrote the poem or not,--and the
probabilities favor his authorship, though we may not hesitate to say
with Morley, "I don't know,"--it is certainly the work of a gifted
Christian poet, who reverences the cross as the means of the redemption
of mankind.

This brief Introduction will, it is hoped, be sufficient to interest the
reader in the accompanying translations of some of the finest pieces of
Old English poetry that remain to us from the eighth, ninth, and tenth
centuries. The earlier period was the golden age of Old English poetry
in the Northumbrian dialect, which poetry, there is good reason to
think, was copied into the West-Saxon dialect, and it now remains to us
only in that form; for, when the Northmen harried Northumbria, destroyed
its monasteries, massacred its inhabitants, and settled in its homes,
manuscripts perished, and the light of learning in Western Europe was
extinguished. It is sufficient to recall King Alfred's oft-quoted
lament, in the Preface to his translation of Pope Gregory's "Pastoral
Care," to realize the position held by Northumbria in respect to
culture, and when learning was restored in Wessex by the efforts of the
king himself, and poetry again revived, it shone but by a reflected
light. Still we should treasure all that remains, and the Old English
language should be at least as well known as Latin is now, and should
occupy as prominent a position in education and general culture. Until
that millennial period arrives, translations of Old English poems may
not be without service.


ABBREVIATIONS IN NOTES.