med to bleed.
Flesh and soul, I had slain thee, myself, had I thought,
Son of Cian, my friend, that thy faith had been bought
By a bribe from the tribe of the Bryneish! But no;
He scorned to take dowry from hands of the foe,
And I, all unhurt, lost a friend in the fight,
Whom the wrath of a father felled down for the slight.

THE GIANT GWRVELING FALLS AT LAST

[The bard tells the story of Gwrveling's revelry, impulsive bravery, and
final slaughter of the foe before yielding to their prowess.]

Light of lights--the sun,
Leader of the day,
First to rise and run
His appointed way,
Crowned with many a ray,
Seeks the British sky;
Sees the flight's dismay,
Sees the Britons fly.
The horn in Eiddin's hall
Had sparkled with the wine,
And thither, at a call
To drink and be divine,
He went, to share the feast
Of reapers, wine and mead.
He drank, and so increased
His daring for wild deed.
The reapers sang of war
That lifts its shining wings,
Its shining wings of fire,
Its shields that flutter far.
The bards, too, sang of war,
Of plumed and crested war;
The song rose ever higher.
Not a shield
Escapes the shock,
To the field
They fiercely flock,--
There to fall.
But of all
Who struck on giant Gwrveling,
Whom he would he struck again,
All he struck in grave were lain,
Ere the bearers came to bring
To his grave stout Gwrveling.

ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE

BY ROBERT SHARP

The earliest recorded utterances of a race, whether in poetry or in
prose, become to the representatives of this race in later days a
treasure beyond price. The value of such monuments of the remote past is
manifold. In them we first begin to become really acquainted with
ancestors of the people of to-day, even though we may have read in the
pages of earlier writers of alien descent much that is of great
concurrent interest. Through the medium of the native saga, epic, and
meagre chronicle, we see for the first time their real though dim
outlines, moving in and out of the mists that obscure the dawn of
history; and these outlines become more and more distinct as the
literary remains of succeeding periods become more abundant and present
more varied aspects of life. We come gradually to know what ma