"The beginning of things created."
Cædmon then made in his sleep a poem about the Creation, and when he awoke he remembered it, as Coleridge made "Kubla Khan" in a dream, and remembered part of it until he was disturbed by a person on business from Porlock. After this Cædmon made sacred poems, doing Scripture into verse, with perfect ease, and he became a monk.
Now there exist long Anglo-Saxon poems on parts of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, and it has been very naturally supposed that these are the poems of Cædmon, which, as Bede thought, had never been equalled in the Anglian tongue. Nothing is known for certain, and only one short hymn has a good chance to be by the poet Cædmon. The ideas of the poet singing of the war in Heaven, so closely resemble those of Milton, in "Paradise Lost," that Milton has been supposed to have known something of the Anglo-Saxon poem.[1] No lines in "Paradise Lost," are more familiar than those which describe a land of fire,
Yet from these flames,
No light, but rather darkness visible,
Served only to discover sights of woe.
The old Anglo-Saxon poet says:—
They sought another land,
That was devoid of light,
And was full of flame.
The speech of Satan, too, in Anglo-Saxon, the speech in which he blames the justice of God; his threat of what he would do, were he free for but one winter; his design to avenge himself on Adam and his posterity, are all like Milton, whose
Fairest of her daughters, Eve,
is exactly like