When learned men began to look at the Runes with an eye of erudite curiosity, they often ranged them in the A, B, C order of the Roman alphabet; hence it gives the Rune poem some air of antiquity that it runs in the old Futhorc order. And, indeed, some of the versicles may perhaps be ancient; that is, they may possibly date from a time when Runes were still in practical use. But certainly much of this chaplet of versicles must be regarded as late and dilettante work. The Rune names are not all clearly authentic; for example, “Eoh” is rather dubious; but the poet treats the name as meaning Yew, and gives us an interesting little epigram on the Yew-tree:—

EOH bith utan
unsmethe treow
heard hrusan fæst
hyrde fyres
wyrtrumum underwrethed
wynan on æthle.
 Yew is outwardly
unpolished tree;
hard and ground-fast,
guardian of fire;
with roots underwattled
the home of the Want.[140]

The Riddles are mostly after Simphosius and Aldhelm;[141] but some are aboriginal. The form is mostly that of the epigram, only instead of having the name of the subject at the head of the piece as with epigrams, these little poems end with a question what the subject is. These Riddles are found in the Exeter book in three batches; Grein has drawn them all together, and made eighty-nine of them. That on the Book-Moth, of which the Latin has been given above, p. [88], is unriddled by the translator:—

Moððe word fiæt;
me þæt þuhte
wrætlicu wyrd
þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn;
þæt se wyrm forswealg
wera gied sumes
þeof in þystro
þrymfæstne cwide
and þæs strangan staðol.
Stælgiest ne wæs
wihte þy gleawra
þe he þam wordum swealg.
 Moth words devoured;
to me it seemed
a weird event
when I the wonder learnt;
that the worm swallowed
sentence of man
(thief in the dark)
document sure,
binding and all.
The burglar was never
a whit the more wise
for the words he had gulped.

Toward the end of the period, the poetic form becomes much diluted. The poetic diction wanes, so does the figured style and the parallel structure; and what remains is an alliterative rhythmical prose, which, from the nature of the subjects treated, appears to have been very taking for the ear of the people. Of this sort is the Lay of King Abgar, which Professor Stephens assigns to the reign of Cnut. The Abgar legend is in Eusebius (died 340) “History,” i. 13. Abgar, king of Edessa, being sick, wrote a letter to the Saviour (it being the time of His earthly ministry) praying him to come and heal him, and adding, that if, as he hears, the Jews seek to persecute Him, his city of Edessa, though a little one, is stately, and sufficient for both.

... and ic wolde the biddan
thæt thu gemedemige the sylfne
thæt thu siðige to me
and mine untrumnysse gehæle
for than the ic eom yfele gahæfd.
Me is eac gesæd
thæt tha Judeiscan syrwiath
and runiath him betwynan
hu hi the berædan magon,
and ic hæbbe ane burh,
the unc bam genihtsumath.
 ... and I would thee pray,
that thou condescend
to come unto me,
and my infirmity cure,
for I am in evil case.
To me is eke said
that the Jews are plotting
and rowning together
how they may destroy thee;
and I have a burgh
large enough for us both.[142]

The impression which this secondary poetry leaves is, that the old ancestral form could no longer furnish an adequate poetry for the growing mind of the nation. In contrast with the expanding prose, it seems to shrink and fade before our eyes. Its only means of enlargement seems to be in forgetting its own traditions and assimilating itself to the prose. Moreover, we have traces of various tentative sallies; one poet trying rhymes,[143] another trying hexameters,[144] which reminds us of the efforts and essays of the unsatisfied poetic genius in the middle of the sixteenth century. The Benedictine revival had drawn off the interest from the old native themes of song to subjects less fitted for poetry, or with which the poetry of the time was not yet skilled to deal. The old poetry fitted the old heroic themes with which it had grown up; and now it throve better on apocryphal and legendary fables than on the verities of the faith which were rather beyond its strength. In the new zeal the old vein of poetry was lost or neglected, and its place was not yet appropriately filled.

For this want a provision was already making in the south. A fresh spirit of poetry had risen in the region where Roman and Arabic fancy met, and, after kindling France, was coming to England on the wings of the French language. With the new romances came new models of poetic form. A long struggle ensued between the native garb of English poetry and that of the French. Both lived together until the fourteenth century, when the victory of the French form was finally determined in Chaucer; and France set the fashion in poetry to England, as it did generally to modern Europe.

[131] In Wright’s “Biographia Literaria,” Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 502, seq., these three Runic passages are collected and translated. In Bosworth’s “Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,” ed. Toller, v. Cynewulf; the Runic passage is quoted from the Elene, and translated. This poet’s Runic device affects us somewhat as when, at the end of a volume of Coleridge’s poems, we come upon his epitaph, written by himself:—

“Stop, Christian passer-by!—Stop, child of God!
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seem’d he—
Oh, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.!”