The Columbia History of British Poetry Read Online Free Page A

wars of Abraham inspire some fine vernacular battle poetry. When the patriarch, trusting in God, achieves a great victory over the armies of the north, nine words of the Latin Bible ("with retainers he rushed upon the enemy by night and attacked them") are expanded into a full-scale conflict, attended by dark ravens, ring-adorned swords, noise of shields and shafts, and "sharp spears gripping unlovingly under the clothes of men." Old English poetic diction does not seem at home with scriptural sheep and mountains, bread and wine, cities and gardens, bride and bridegroom, cinnamon and honey. At the end of the biblical story of Judith, her rewards are the bedclothes and pots and pans of Holofernes; in the Old English Judith , she inherits his sword, armor, and helmet.
Anglo-Saxon "attitudes" are also operative on the losing side. The vengeful fallen angels in Genesis B demonstrate loyalty to their leader, defiance of the enemy, love of freedom, and hatred of servitude. Satan, the world's first rebel, is as heroic and unbowed as his counterpart in Paradise Lost . Because Milton's work appeared some twelve years after the publication of the Cædmon manuscript by Junius, whom Milton knew, critics still speculate whether he knew the Old English poem.
Exodus lingers in the mind as the alien, the oddly shaped and worded stranger haunting the halls of Old English poetry. Its diction seems more allusive and learned, its syntax more wrenched, its layering of meaning deeper than that in the other scriptural poems. The epic "plot" of Exodus is the myth of deliverance itself: the escape from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea (with two flashbacks to Noah and Abraham), and the destruction in its waters of the pursuing Egyptians. The final scene depicts the Israelites on the far shore, sharing out the spoils of warEgyptian necklaces, ancient armor and shields, gold and precious cloth (a scene that serves as a model for the Christian appropriation of pagan literature).
Cycles of pride and downfall inform the narrative of Daniel , the last Old Testament poem in MS Junius XI. At the center of the Old English poem are the songs of Azarias and the three children in the fiery

 

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furnace; these canticles, asking God for deliverance and, in consonance with all creation, praising him, were used in the liturgy as set hymns of praise, comparable to the Psalms.
The metrical version of Psalms 51150 in the Paris Psalter, the longest "poem" by far in Old English, is also the least read and admired. Yet the psalter was the biblical book most often copied and memorized in Anglo-Saxon England. The Old English poetic rendition uses heroic diction with noticeable reluctance, thereby distancing itself from the tradition embodied in the Junius XI paraphrases, and it is the only Old English poem provided with a facing Latin version in the same manuscript.
Like most poetry on New Testament themes, the verse collection that goes under the name of Christ and Satan follows no particular scriptural text; the gospel story is there, but the poet is forever abandoning narrative for exegesis and exhortation. Images of light and darkness play against each other; the laments of the fallen angels, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Last Judgment are featured; and hearers are urged to shake off the taint of evil and show themselves on the side of their rescuer.
The three Christ poems that open the Exeter Book all have learned sources, which they edit, embroider, and elucidate freely. Christ I (lines 1439), densely metaphorical and allusive, is based on a series of antiphons sung on the days before Christmas. Christ II (lines 440866) follows loosely the last part of an Ascension Day sermon by Gregory the Great. Christ, a triumphant war leader who has harrowed hell, is shown entering into his own city; to celebrate his victory, he distributes rewards to his followers: a catalogue of his "gifts" (the various spiritual and physical endowments of men) is then supplied. The