"The Husband's Message," which is the oldest love song in our literature;
and a few ballads and battle songs, such as "The Battle of Brunanburh"
(familiar to us in Tennyson's translation) and "The Fight at Finnsburgh,"
which was mentioned by the gleemen in _Beowulf_, and which was then
probably as well known as "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is to modern
Englishmen.

Another early war song, "The Battle of Maldon" or "Byrhtnoth's Death," has
seldom been rivaled in savage vigor or in the expression of deathless
loyalty to a chosen leader. The climax of the poem is reached when the few
survivors of an uneven battle make a ring of spears about their fallen
chief, shake their weapons in the face of an overwhelming horde of Danes,
while Byrhtwold, "the old comrade," chants their defiance:

The sterner shall thought be, the bolder our hearts,
The greater the mood as lessens our might.

We know not when or by whom this stirring battle cry was written. It was
copied under date of 991 in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, and is
commonly called the swan song of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The lion song would be
a better name for it.

LATER PROSE AND POETRY. The works we have just considered were wholly pagan
in spirit, but all reference to Thor or other gods was excluded by the
monks who first wrote down the scop's poetry.

With the coming of these monks a reform swept over pagan England, and
literature reflected the change in a variety of ways. For example, early
Anglo-Saxon poetry was mostly warlike, for the reason that the various
earldoms were in constant strife; but now the peace of good will was