Loud cries the lone flier,
And stirs the mind's longing

To travel the way that is trackless,
The death-way over the flood;

and he muses upon the life and death, and, most of all, the memories of the blest, whose true deeds are cherished among men on earth, while their glory grows among the angels of God in the life everlasting.

The Departed Soul's Address to the Body is found both in the Exeter and Vercelli books, and is in two parts, according as he to whom the Spirit had been given had lived well or ill. It perhaps dates from a time not very much prior to the Conquest. The following is a version of a passage in the first of the two :— God sent me to thee by His angel,

From heaven, a living soul;

With the Holy Blood He bought thee,

And delivered thee from dole.

But thou-thou didst bind me captive,
Didst hold me in cruel thrall;

And I could not but dwell within thee,
Penned in by the fleshly wall.

Thou didst crush me with lusts and sinning;
And it seemed to thy death-day

Long as ten thousand winters

That I tarried still thy prey.

Thou didst sit midst wine and feasting,

And never, alack! didst think

How I craved for the Lord's own body,

How I longed for the Spirit's drink.1

I must give one more quotation only from the Exeter Codex, from the first part of the Supplication:

Help me, O Holy Lord,
Shaper of earth and heaven,
And of their wonders all,
My Glory-King!
Eternal Lord!

Mighty and manifold!

Hearken, great God ;

Lo, I do trust to Thee

1 Exeter Book: A Departed Soul's Address to the Body, 368: 'And

se thurh engel.'

B

Body and soul,
Words and works,

And all my divers thoughts,

O wise God.
Giver of light!

I pray Thee betoken,
Lord, to my soul,
How I may heedfully
Mark Thy great will,
Live to Thee only,
Soothfast King!
And in my heart
Good rede up-raise.
Weakly, more weakly
Than it were well,

O God, my Maker,

Have I hearkened to Thee :

Yet, let not him, the Thief,
Scathe me in night.
O living God,

Do Thou forgive

My bitter, baleful deeds!
Not bootless in my prayer,
If but I come to Thee.
O, give me time, my God,
And a wise heart;

Give me a will to bear,
A mind to heed,

All that, O faithful Lord,
Thou dost in trial send.1

Bede (c. 673-735) has not left any English verse; but his Latin poem on the Domesday was early translated into the vernacular. Some authorities, however, ascribe the Latin original to Alcuin. The first English manuscript which contains it is of the tenth century. give a rendering of a short extract from it :

I rede thee, be thou quick with rueful tears;
Forestall the anger of the eternal Judge.
Why dost thou lie in dust, burdened with shame,
O flesh and sins? Ah, why not cleanse away,
With tears poured forth, thy load of troublous sin?
Why ask not for thyself bathings and salves,—

1 A Supplication, 1-32, in id. 452: Ahelpe min, se halga dryhten.'

Leechdoms of life-from Him the Lord of life?

Glad is the Son of God in throes of grief,
And when thou judg'st thyself for sins on earth.
Never will heaven's God for guilt and wrong
Wreak wrath twice over upon any man.

Slight not the heaving groan, the sorrowing cry,
And of forgiveness this the ready time.1

The same manuscript contains poetical paragraphs of the Lord's Prayer, and of the Doxology. I append a version of the lines on the 'Et nunc et semper' of the latter:

And now for evermore Thy faithful works,
And Thy great might abideth, clear to all.
They tell of Thine high wisdom far and wide,
And throughout all the world they stand for aye.
Thy handiwork, O God, hearkens Thy word,
And groweth ever; all things praise the Lord,

The songs of saints, clean tongues, and Christian books,
All this mid earth, and we men call aloud

Here on its ground-"To Thee be thanks and praise,
Thy will unchanging, Thine own steadfast law."

Salomon and Saturn is the English form of a story in dialogue, which was for many centuries exceedingly popular in almost every country of Europe. It contains both Northern and Oriental elements, and varies in the most singular ways; at one time a solemn and serious piece of mystical theosophy; at another, a coarse but humorous parody; at another (in the French), still further degraded.' The First-English or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest extant version of it, and 'is the only one in which it is solemnly and seriously treated.' There is much that is figurative in it, much that is fantastic and exaggerated, much that sounds like mere rhapsody. In the first part the Paternoster is personified, with much embellishment of Eastern hyperbole, and in the

1 Bede's De Domes Dage, 75-91; Early English Text Soc. 1876: 'Ic lære the thu beo hrædra mid hreowlicum tearum.'

2

Paraphrase on the Doxology, 11. 30-40, in id. : 'And nu symle thine sodhan weore.'

3 Kemble's Introduction, p. 2.

dialogue Salomon, in answer to Saturn, descants upon its virtues. But the grave and strong religious feeling of our early forefathers in England has preserved it in a very remarkable manner from the course and flippant humour which often marked it on the Continent. The second part of the poem (our copy of which dates from the eleventh century) is a sort of general colloquy, in a series of riddling questions and answers, on theological and moral subjects, Scripture being greatly mixed up with allegory and legend. The following are a few lines picked from Salomon's encomium on the excellencies of the sacred Word

:

Golden the Word of God, and to man's soul

Sweeter than milk and honey! It can bring
Him who hath strayed in shades of endless night
Back by its blessed power into Christ's fold.

It heals the lame, and to the blind gives sight,
And to the deaf his hearing; and the dumb
Can praise the Lord again with unloosed tongue.
The sinner finds a shelter; and great God
Himself makes dwelling in the Holy Word.1

In speaking of The Legend of St. Guthlac, reference was made to the idea of a man being encompassed in the time of temptation by unseen powers alike of good and evil. The thought seems to have deeply impressed itself upon the religion of the early English, for we find it again in this dialogue. The translation given is very literal:

Quoth Salomon,

About him go

Twain spirits: gladder one than brightest gold;
The other swarthier than the depths beneath.
One cometh from the pains of steely hell;
The other teacheth him, that he hold love,

His Maker's mercy, and his kinsmen's rede.

Woe that the one should lead the man astray,

1 The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturn, 173; ed. by J. M. Kemble for the Ælfric Society, p. 138.

And draw him sinful to the worser side,
To do the devil's will the whole day long!

Then going forth with tears, fares on his way
The angel to his home, and sadly cries:

66 I could not from his heart drive out the stone,
Which in its flinty weight cleaves to his soul !"' 1

The following is a short quotation from the second part:

Quoth Salomon,

'A little while

The leaf is green, then falloweth again,
Falleth to earth, and turneth to its dust.
E'en so shall fall they who work sin on earth,
Who live in guilt, who hide their costly hoards,
And guard them strongly in their fastnesses,
Thereby to gladden fiends. Foolish, they ween
That He the King of Heaven, Almighty God,
Will hear them in their trouble, when they cry.'2

1 The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturn, 974-1007, p. 175: Donne hine ymbegangath

Gastas twegen; other bith golde glædra.

2 Id. 625, p. 163.