The principle poetical works of the Old English Period

The extant Anglo-Saxson poetry may be broadly divided into two classes Pagan and Christian.The Anglo-Saxson settlers of the island brought with them certain poems which are of Pagan origin and inspiration.They belonged to the continentent and had nothing to do with Britain, though most were compiled or edited between the eightth and tenth centuries in England by the clerks who knew Latin and whoose minds were coloured by Christian doctrines and morality.Thus there is a curious blend of the Pagan and Christian sentiments in them.To this group belong most of the beautiful poems which have been preserved in their original freshness and excellence, for instance, Beowoulf, Widsith and The Fight at Finnsburth, The Battle of Maldon.The Anglo-Saxson elegies like The Wanderer, Deor, The Seafarer, The Wife's Complaint, The Ruin, though not of continental origin, come from the Pagan tradition,though some of them have been touched with Christian sentiments.All these poems breathe a poignant melancholy , which became a strong note in much of later English poetry.Their world is a sombre, bleak world, with sunless mores, icy seas and windy heath.A profound sence of fate pervades all these poems.

Chritianity produced two poets cademon(c. 675) and Cynewulf (c. 800).Bede in his Ecelesiastical History tells the story how his lay brother in St. Hidas Abbey, Cademon became divinely inspired and wrote poetry.He sang of Creation, the Exodus, the passion of Christ and paraphrased in verse many other Biblical stories.The four poems in the Junius Ms. Genesis ,Exodus, Daniel and Christ and Satan are generally attributed to Cademon on the basis of this authority of Bede but scholars no longer believe that these poems are by Cademon.They are not all by one hand.

The other Anglo-Saxson poet whom we know by name and who signed some of the poems in runic charaecters is Cynewulf.These poems are Christ,Elene, Juliana and The Fates of the Apostles.These poems show great qualities - a power of expressison and description.Other poems ascribed to him are The Fail of Angels, The Dream of the Rood, The Phoneix etc.

From this meagre mass of Anglo-Saxson poetry it is not difficult to choose two great poems which are significant in more sences than one.These are Beowulf and The Dream of the Rood.

Beowulf  is the first of the epics in English poetry.The Angels brought the story is about of Beowulf with them to England in the sixth century.The story is about Scandivians.It contains over three thousand lines and deals with three episodes which are connected together only by the central figure of the hero himself.It was written down in Britain by a Christian sribe about 700 A.D. but the materials from which it was composed belong to an earlier date and to a distant Pagan land.Beowulf is no national epic like Homer's Iliad.The story is mere folkklore.