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CHAPTER 1

Caedmon's Hymn

Caedmon (seventh century)

Now we must praise the Keeper of Heaven's Kingdom,
The might of the Maker and his wisdom,
The work of the Glory-Father, when he of every wonder,
The eternal Lord, the beginning established.

He first created for the sons of earth Heaven as a roof, Holy Creator,
Then middle-earth the Protector of mankind,
Eternal Lord, afterwards made,
The earth for men, the Lord Almighty.

* * *

Notes on selected words.Keeper: guardian or ruler. Might: power. The Maker: could also be translated "the Measurer," with architectural overtones. Wisdom: "mind-plans" in the original Old English, with the implication of thoughtful purpose and careful planning. The Glory-Father: God of glory. Heaven [line 6]: the sky. Middle-earth: standard term for earth in the Old and Middle English periods.

Commentary. This poem (originally written in Old English and here translated by Leland Ryken) is the oldest surviving poem in the English language. The story of its origin is as famous as the poem. The story was recorded by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c. 730). Caedmon was an illiterate farmhand residing at Whitby Abbey in northeast England. Whenever the harp was passed around the dining hall at feasts so residents of the abbey could take turns singing, Caedmon found an excuse to leave the meal early. On one of these occasions, Caedmon went to the barn and fell asleep. In a dream, he heard someone telling him to sing something. Caedmon replied that he did not know how to sing. "Sing about creation," the visitor replied. Thereupon Caedmon sang the song known as "Caedmon's Hymn." The new poetic gift never left Caedmon. English poetry thus began with a miracle of the word.

"Caedmon's Hymn" is an example of the artistic category that we can call "the simple as a form of beauty." Only nine lines long, the poem follows the biblical genre known as the psalm of praise. The content of the praise comes straight from the creation story in Genesis 1. It is an abbreviated account of that story, taking a wide-angle view of God's first creating the entire world and then the earth specifically as a provision for people.

The poem does three things that praise psalms typically do: (1) it begins with a formal call to praise God (the first stanza); (2) it provides a list or catalog of God's praiseworthy acts; and (3) it rounds off the praise with a note of closure in the last line. This simplicity is played off against two pleasing forms of stylistic formality and artistry. First, Caedmon loaded his poem with phrases and clauses that name the same phenomena with different words, a technique influenced by the biblical verse form of parallelism. Second, our spirit is elevated by exalted titles for God, a technique known as epithets. For example, the first epithet in the poem is the Keeper of Heaven's Kingdom.

Structurally the poem falls into complementary halves, as signaled by the stanzaic arrangement. The first stanza praises God's sovereignty in creating the entire cosmos, and the epithets for God accordingly stress his transcendence. The second stanza praises God's creative acts on behalf of humankind, as the cosmic imagery of the first stanza gives way to a vocabulary of earth and people.

The Dream of the Rood

Anonymous (possibly eighth century)
Listen, I will tell of the best of visions,
which came to me in the middle of the night. ...
Lying there a long while,
in sorrow I beheld the Savior's tree,
until I heard it utter a sound;
the best of wood began to speak these words:

[The personified cross tells the story of the crucifixion:]

It was long ago — I still remember it —
that I was cut down from the edge of the forest,
ripped up by my roots. Strong enemies seized me there,
made me their spectacle, forced me to bear criminals. ...
I was raised as a cross; I lifted up a mighty King,
the Lord of heaven; I did not dare to bend.
They pierced me with dark nails; I bear the scars,
the open wounds of hatred. ...
They mocked us both together. I was drenched with blood that flowed from that man's side after he had sent forth his spirit. ...

[The personified cross describes its present glory in the world:]

  Now the time has come when men will honor me far and wide over the earth and all this glorious creation,
and pray to this beacon. On me the Son of God suffered for a while. I am therefore glorious now,
and rise under the heavens, able to heal each one of those who will reverence me. ...

[The cross entrusts the speaker/dreamer with a task:]

Now I command you, my beloved man,
that you reveal this vision to men;
tell them in word that it is the tree of glory on which almighty God suffered for mankind's many sins and Adam's ancient deeds.
Death he tasted there, yet God rose again by his great might to help mankind.
He ascended into heaven. He will come again to this middle-earth to seek mankind on doomsday. ...

[The speaker's testimony to the power of the cross:]

Then I prayed to the cross with a happy heart and great zeal, where I was alone with little company. My spirit was inspired for the journey forward. ...
  It is now my life's hope that I might seek the tree of victory alone more than all men,
to honor it well. My desire for that is much in my mind, and my hope of protection is fixed on the cross. ...
  May the Lord be my friend,
he who here on earth suffered on the hanging-tree for the sins of man.
He ransomed us and gave us life,
a heavenly home. ...
The Son was victorious in that venture,
mighty and successful, when he came with a multitude,
a great host of souls, into God's kingdom,
the one Ruler almighty, to the joy of angels and all the saints already in heaven,
dwelling in glory, when their Ruler,
almighty God, came to his rightful homeland.

* * *

Notes on selected words.Rood: cross. The best of wood: an epithet denoting the cross. My beloved man: the speaker in the poem; the one who received the vision that the poem records. Adam's ancient deeds: original sin; the disobedience in the garden and its effects in the world. Middle-earth: medieval designation for the earth. Doomsday: the judgment day, or last day.

Commentary. This poem was originally written in Old English and is here translated by Leland Ryken. The poem as printed here is excerpted from a longer poem.

The devotional potential of this poem lies in its theme, namely, the power of the cross. Everything in the poem relates to that. The poem draws upon a favorite genre of the Middle Ages known as the dream vision. This genre is prominent in the Bible and in subsequent literary history (with John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress being a famous example). In this genre, a speaker or narrator pictures himself as receiving a vision. This is only the external framework; the content of the imagined vision is what the poem is actually about. The opening lines of this poem introduce this visionary framework, as the speaker announces to us that he heard the cross of Christ speak to him in a dream.

After this opening, the poem unfolds in four movements, each one represented briefly in the excerpted version above. First the cross describes the circumstances of Christ's crucifixion; the devotional aspect is that we are led to ponder the physical suffering and torture of Christ's crucifixion. Next the cross asserts that glory has come to it because of the victory that Jesus achieved on the cross. Third, the cross charges the speaker/dreamer with the task of testifying about the cross in the world by declaring the gospel to humankind. The poem then reaches its climax in the concluding section, where the speaker testifies to what the cross means to him in his journey of life. At the very end of this section, the poem draws upon a theological tradition known as Christus Victor (Christ triumphant), ending the poem on a note of celebration and triumph.

As we progress through these phases, we are led to ponder the cross of Christ from various angles, including the horror and agony of what Christ endured on the cross and the glory that the cross has embodied throughout history because of what Christ achieved by his death on it. The poem also celebrates the power of the cross to save and give direction to one's life. The final note is doxological, as the speaker celebrates the victorious Christ of the cross.

O What Their Joy and Their Glory Must Be

Peter Abelard (1079–1142)
O what their joy and their glory must be,
Those endless Sabbaths the blesséd ones see;
Crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest:
God shall be all, and in all ever blest.

What are the Monarch, his court and his throne?
What are the peace and the joy that they own?
O that the blesséd ones, who in it have share,
All that they feel could as fully declare!

Truly, "Jerusalem" name we that shore,
City of peace that brings joy evermore;
Wish and fulfillment are not severed there,
Nor do things prayed for come short of the prayer.

There, where no troubles distraction can bring,
We the sweet anthems of Zion shall sing;
While for thy grace, Lord, their voices of praise Thy blesséd people eternally raise.

Now, in the meantime, with hearts raised on high,
We for that country must yearn and must sigh,
Seeking Jerusalem, dear native land,
Through our long exile on Babylon's strand.

Low before him with our praises we fall,
Of whom and in whom and through whom are all;
Of whom, the Father; and in whom, the Son;
And through whom, the Spirit, with them ever One.

* * *

Notes on selected words.All that they feel could as fully declare: the wish is that the blessed saints in heaven could declare their bliss in words as fully as they feel it. Come short of: fall short of. Yearn: long. Babylon: this fallen earthly order of things; the terminology comes from the book of Revelation. Strand: shore.

Commentary. This poem was composed in twelfth-century French; the translation by which the English-speaking world knows it was produced by John Mason Neale, a famed nineteenth-century English translator of hymns.

It is doubtless a surprising claim that a major part of a poem's beauty and power can reside in its meter, but occasionally the claim is accurate, as it is here. The usual function of regular meter in a poem is to provide a smooth flow for the words in a poem — to keep the language and content moving onward in regular rhythm. This is what is called the music of poetry. Ordinarily smooth meter is like the air we breathe — essential to the life of a poem but itself unnoticed unless we are abruptly or unpleasantly made aware of an irregular and staccato effect.

Sometimes, however, we are fully aware of the presence of meter as a leading source of our pleasure. The English translation of Abelard's famous poem about heaven sweeps us along with its unusual meter. The customary metrical form for English poetry is called "iambic," and it consists of two-syllable feet (or units) in which an unaccented syllable is followed by an accented one (for example: re-mark). However, the poem printed above consists primarily of anapestic feet — three-syllable units comprised of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable (for example: God shall be). The effect is to sweep us along at an accelerated pace. Oral reading of the poem will immediately confirm this effect.

The subject of the poem is the joys of heaven — as realized by saints who are already there and anticipated by those who are still in their earthly journey to heaven. The chief strategy in the poem is to awaken our longing for heaven. While the metrical pace of the poem is the chief element in the poem, the imagery plays its part as well. There is a thread of ecstatic vocabulary, with words such as joy, glory, peace, throne, all, and hearts raised on high. The motif of the endlessness of heavenly joys permeates the poem. Evocative images of transcendence fire our imaginations and longings for heaven too: Sabbath, Jerusalem, Zion. Other deft touches will reveal themselves to anyone who looks at the poem carefully.

C. S. Lewis claimed regarding the term "classic" that once we have developed a taste for it, no other work comes close to being an adequate substitute. This poem surely meets that criterion and is a classic devotional poem.

Canticle of the Sun

St. Francis of Assisi (1184–1226)

Most high, all-powerful, all good, Lord!
All praise is yours, all glory, all honor,
And all blessing.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong.
No mortal lips are worthy To pronounce your name.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;
In the heavens you have made them, bright And precious and fair.

All praise be yours, My Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom you brighten up the night.
How beautiful is he, how gay! Full of power and strength.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother,
Who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces Various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through those who grant pardon For love of you; through those who endure Sickness and trial.
Happy those who endure in peace,
By you, Most High, they will be crowned.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death,
From whose embrace no mortal can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin!
Happy those She finds doing your will!
The second death can do no harm to them.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks,
And serve him with great humility.

* * *

Notes on selected words.Gay: brilliant in color. Mortal sin: in Catholic theology, a sin that is so serious that it leads to eternal damnation if a person is not absolved of it before death.

Commentary. This version of this medieval poem has been translated by Benen Fahy. The poem is also known by the title "Canticle of the Creatures." It is one of the first works of literature written in the Italian language. St. Francis's communion with the creatures of nature is legendary, and this poem bears the imprint of the poet's everyday life in nature. St. Francis became blind in his early forties (as did English poet John Milton).

This poem has been important through the centuries, especially in musical versions. A familiar paraphrased version of this poem is the hymn "All Creatures of Our Lord and King" (composed by William H. Draper for a children's festival in Leeds, England, and published in the Public School Hymn Book in 1919). Elizabeth Goudge's poem "Spring Song" also borrows heavily from the motifs in Francis of Assisi's poem. Finally, in this vein of the dependence of texts upon texts, the dominant element in the format of the poem, a catalog of various elements of nature that are linked to the praise of God, can be found in Psalm 148.

The entire poem is a dramatic address to God, making it a prayer. The genre of the poem is a psalm of praise to God, as the poet consistently ascribes praise to God. Through most of the poem, God is praised for the familiar features of the creation that make up our daily lives in the physical world. The most memorable motif in the enterprise is surely the domestication of natural forces, so that the sun becomes our brother, the moon and stars our sister, and so forth. Just as Psalm 148 moves from the natural world to the human sphere and God's redemption of people as it nears its end, this poem makes that same shift in the last two stanzas.

Sunset on Calvary

Anonymous (date unknown)

Now goes the sun under wood;
I rue, Mary, thy fair face.
Now goes the sun under tree;
I rue, Mary, thy son and thee.

* * *

Notes on selected words.Sun: a pun, as both sun and son are in view. Wood: the cross. Rue: pity. Fair: pale or white, and perhaps also beautiful. Tree: the cross.

Commentary. "Sunset on Calvary" was originally composed in Middle English and is here translated by Leland Ryken.

This poem is a classic example of two cherished qualities of much poetry: (1) the simple as a form of beauty, and (2) a hidden complexity that is initially concealed by a surface simplicity. The simplicity is what we first absorb: a four-line poem; in the original Middle English possessing two rhyming couplets (wode and rode [face], tree and thee; patterns of repetition in lines 1 and 3, and 2 and 4. The religious sentiment too is simple and moving, as the speaker expresses his pity for the mother of Jesus as she witness the crucifixion of her son, and for Jesus himself as he endures the suffering of crucifixion (line 4). The era of the Middle Ages was unsophisticated, and this poem breathes the age's characteristic simple piety.

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Excerpted from "The Soul in Paraphrase"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Leland Ryken.
Excerpted by permission of Good News Publishers.
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