But a churl comes adrip from the rivers, pants me out, fallen spent on the floor:
'O King Raedwald, Northumbria marches, and to-morrow knocks hard at thy door,
Hot for melting thy crown on the hearth!' Then commend me to Woden and Thor!
***
For my thought flashes out as a sword, cleaving counsel as clottage of cream
And your incense and chanting are but as the smoke of burnt towns and the scream:
And I quaff me the thick mead of triumph from enemies' skulls in my dream!"[1]
III
But the England of Bede is one in which the White Christ has triumphed. Over it rises that Sign which the author of the greatest Early English poem, The Dream of the Rood, beheld with trembling adoration uplifted in the heavens. When saintly King Oswald planted the Cross with his own hands upon his battle-field, as we may read in the second chapter of Bede's third book, a new day had dawned for the British Isles. Nor can we wonder that the spot where the trophy was erected should "in the English tongue" have been called "Heavenfield," nor that old moss scraped from the surface of that Wood should have been potent to heal disease.
In the time of Bede, Christian kings are on the throne. Learning exerts its new and fascinating spell—from his own Jarrow the best extant text of the Vulgate, the Codex Amiatinus, comes to us. Music, far different from the wild song of the Scop at feast or funeral, is cultivated with delight. The painful isolation of hostile or unlettered tribes is replaced by a wide-spread community of interests in arts and sciences, in government and faith; so that Bede in his seclusion can know fruitful intercourse with ripe scholars in various countries, with statesmen, with travellers from distant lands. Above all, monasticism has attained the zenith of its power. England is dotted all over with monasteries in which women are experiencing new peace and freedom, and the sons of the
- ↑ King Raedwald: Helen Gray Cove.
