The Poet's love of the Cross: how he saw it in a double aspect. The
dream of the Holy Rood. The Ruthwell Cross.

Now let us read what our poet says about the Festival of the Finding of
the Cross.[F]

[Footnote F: The phrase "Invention of the Cross" means the finding of
it; the word invention in English does not now translate the Latin
"inventio."]

To each of these men
Be hell's door shut, heaven's unclosed,
Eternally opened the kingdom of angels,
Joy without end, and their portion appointed
Along with Mary, who takes into mind
The one most dear of festal days
Of that rood under heaven.

The poet wrote about the Holy Cross, not just because it was a
picturesque subject, capable of picturesque treatment, one that would
make a fine poem; but because, as he tells us, Holy Wisdom had revealed
to him "wider knowledge through her glorious power over the thoughts of
the mind." He tells us how the fetters of sin had bound him in their
bitter bondage, and how, stained and sorrowful, light came to him, and
the Mighty King bestowed on him His bountiful grace, and gave him light
and liberty, opening his heart and setting free for him the gift of
song, that gift which, he says, he has used in the world joyfully and
with a good will.

Not once alone, he says, did he meditate upon the Tree of Glory, but
over and over again. He thought upon it until all his soul was saturated
with it, and hallowed and consecrated for ever.

He may have venerated the Cross in public on the anniversary of the
Lord's Crucifixion. Certainly, many a time he had venerated it in
private. Perhaps, like Alcuin, his habit was to bow toward the Cross
whenever he saw it, and whisper the prayer "Tuam crucem adoramus,
Domine, et Tuam gloriosam recolimus passionem."[G]

[Footnote G: The Veneration of the Cross, or Creeping to the Cross, was
known in Anglo-Saxon times, but whether as early as Cynewulf's day,
seems uncertain.]

He was old, he tells us, when he "wove word-craft, made his poem,
framing it wondrously, pondering and sifting his thoughts in the
night-time."

The Cross had brought him light and healing, and at the foot of the
Cross he laid his gift of song.

It is a moot point whether the "Elene" or the "Dream of the Holy Rood"
came first. The poetry of the "Dream" is as fine as the conception is
grand, and, at whatever time it was written, it must be classed as being
at the high-water