ded it to be such; nay, it is poetry in
her 'humanities' yet more than in her distinctively spiritual province,
and better poetry than is to be found in the professed poetry of a
materialistic age, when the poet is tempted to take refuge from the
monotony of routine life, either amid the sensational accidents to be
found on the byeways, not the highways, of life, or in some sickly
dreamland that does not dare to deal with life, and belongs neither to
the real nor to the ideal. In nothing is Bede's history of that great
age, to which our own owes all that it possesses of real greatness,
more striking than in that spirit of unconscious elevation and
joyousness which belongs to the Christian life it records, a joyousness
often so strikingly contrasted with the sadness--sometimes a heroic
sadness--to be found in portions of his work describing pagan manners.
With all its violences and inconsistencies, the seventh century was a
noble age--an age of strong hearts which were gentle as well as strong,
of a childhood that survived in manhood, of natures that had not lost
their moral unity, of holy lives and of happy deaths. Bede's picture of
it is a true one; and for that reason it comes home to us.

To some it may seem a profaneness to turn those old legends into verse.
I should not have attempted the enterprise if they were much read in
prose. The verse may at least help to direct the attention of a few
readers to them. From them the thoughtful will learn how to complete a
'half-truth' often reiterated. Those who have declared that 'the wars of
the Heptarchy are as dull as the battles of kites and crows,' have not
always known that the true interest of her turbulent days belonged to
peace, not to war, and is to be found in the spiritual development of
the Anglo-Saxon race.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

ODIN THE MAN 1

KING ETHELBERT OF KENT AND ST. AUGUSTINE 13

THE CONSECRATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY 32

THE PENANCE OF ST. LAURENCE 47

KING SIGEBERT OF EAST ANGLIA, AND HEIDA THE PROPHETESS 66

KING SIGEBERT OF ESSEX, OR A FRIEND AT NEED 84

KING OSWALD OF NORTHUMBRIA, OR THE BRITON'S REVENGE 100

CEADMON THE COWHERD, THE FIRST ENGLISH POET 117

KING OSWY OF NORTHUMBRIA, OR THE WIFE'S VIC