Of men of wisdom who will not need
To consider and judge, ere he sets on his journey,
What his soul shall be granted of good or evil—
5 After his day of death what doom he shall meet.
[1.] Bede, the author of the Ecclesiastical History of England, was the greatest figure in the English church of the seventh and eighth centuries.
SELECTIONS FROM GENESIS
[The poem readily divides itself into two parts: Genesis A, the bulk of the poem, and Genesis B, lines 235-853. The latter is a translation from the Old Saxon. The passage here translated is from Genesis A.
GENESIS A
Critical edition of Genesis A: F. Holthausen, Die ältere Genesis, Heidelberg, 1914.
Translation: C. W. Kennedy, The Cædmon Poems, New York, 1916, p. 7.