second poem, "The Husband's Message," may be written for this wife; we
do not know; at any rate it conveys a message from an absent husband to
a wife; and I will give it to you as an early love-letter. It consists
of two parts, one of which has been thought to be a riddle, but they
have been put together by a learned Professor, and if they do belong to
each other, the arrangement is as interesting as it is beautiful. The
message is given by the letter itself--the slip of bark or wood on which
it was carved--and this wood speaks. First it tells us about itself. It
had dwelt on the beach near the sea-shore: there were few to behold its
home in the solitude, but every morning the brown wave encircled it with
a watery embrace. Then it little thought that even, though itself
mouthless, it should speak among the mead-drinkers and utter words.

A great marvel it is,
Strange in the mouth that knoweth it not,
How the point of the knife and the right hand,
The thought of a man, and his blade therewith,
Shaped me with skill, that boldly I might
So deliver a message to thee
In the presence of us two alone,
That to other men our talk
May not make it more widely known.

The letter then tells how it had come in the keeled vessel, and how the
lady would now know how in her heart she may think of the love of her
lord. "I dare maintain," says the letter, "that there thou wilt find
true loyalty." He that carved the characters on the wood, bad it pray
her, the lady decked with jewels, to remember the vows they twain had
often made when they dwelt together in their home in the same land.