sulphur pains,
Fullness of fire, dread cold, reek and red flames,
He knew it filled."[15]

With this description we may compare these lines from Milton:--

"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round.
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible.
...a fiery deluge, fed
With ever burning sulphur unconsumed."[16]

In Caedmon "the false Archangel and his band lay prone in liquid fire,
scarce visible amid the clouds of rolling smoke." In Milton, Satan is
shown lying "prone on the flood," struggling to escape "from off the
tossing of these fiery waves," to a plain "void of light," except what
comes from "the glimmering of these livid flames." The older poet
sings with forceful simplicity:--

"Then comes, at dawn, the east wind, keen with frost."

Milton writes:--

"...the parching air
Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire."[17]

When Satan rises on his wings to cross the flaming vault, the
_Genesis_ gives in one line an idea that Milton expands into two and a
half:--

"Swang ethaet f=yr on tw=a f=eondes craefte."
Struck the fire asunder with fiendish craft.

"...on each hand the flames,
Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, rolled
In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale."[18]

It is not certain that Milton ever knew of the existence of the
Caedmonian _Genesis_; for he was blind three years before it was
published. But whether he knew of it or not, it is a striking fact
that the temper of the Teutonic mind during a thousand years should
have changed so little toward the choice and treatment of the subject
of an epic, and that the first great poem known to have been written
on English soil should in so many points have anticipated the greatest
epic of the English race.

THE CYNEWULF CYCLE

Cynewulf is the only great Anglo-Saxon poet who affixed his name to
certain poems and thus settled the question of their authorship. We
know nothing of his life except what we infer from his poetry. He was
probably born near the middle of the eighth century, and it is not
unlikely that he passed part of his youth as a thane of some noble. He
became a man of wide learning, well skilled in "wordcraft" and in the
Christian traditions of the time. Such learning could then hardly have
been acquired outside of some monastery whither he may have retired.

[Illustration: ANGLO-SAXON MUS