Earnestly to urge thee to sail the sea
When thou hast heard on the brow of the hill
The mournful cuckoo call in the wood.
Then let no living man keep thee
From the journey, or hinder thy going.
Betake thee to the sea, the home of the mew,
Seat thee in the boat, that southward from here
Beyond the road of the sea thou mayest find the man
Where waits thy prince in hope of thee.

We hope the lady betook herself to the sea-mew's home, and found her
beloved at the end of the journey! Her beloved had no thought of any
greater joy than the granting of Almighty God that together they should
be givers of treasure to men. The beloved has enough of beaten gold and
wealth, and a fair home among the strangers, the noble warriors that
obey him. Banished from home, gone forth a homeless one, in the
stranger-land good has come to him; he has no lack of anything but of
her, who had with him come under an old threat, and had been parted from
him. He vows to fulfil his pledge and love-troth, and he writes in runes
some message, which she, as it appears, would understand, and she alone.

The old, old story, written fair and full.

You will have noticed in the literature we have been considering the
absence of certain elements which are an integral part of our modern
literature. This poem, for instance, is, as far as I know, the only love
poem before the Conquest which has come down to us. There is no romance
either, and there is, we may say, no humour. Life is a very serious
thing, so often lying close to the sword-edge; and the duties of life
are simple. There is to be a great, very great enlargement of the
borders of English literature later on. Prose and poetry are to have new
developments. Romances are to show us heroic ideals. Lyrics of joy, of
sorrow, of passion, of emotion natural and spiritual, are to be sung.
The sense of beauty is to grow. The drama is to arise from beginnings to
be but faintly traced in early days. Epic poetry is to take a great
place. Character modified, enriched by foreign strains, is to mould a
noble literature--noble through many and many a gift and grace. A great
poet is to arise with sympathies large and wide, to show us, in verse
most musical, in words full meaning, with that grace of humour which is
a fresh light upon life, how men and women lived: and to be the great
precursor of a greater than he. Geoffrey Chaucer is to come to us. After
him William Shakespere.