eady, that was Almighty
God.... I trembled when the champion embraced me."[91]

The poem in which St. Andrew figures as a "warrior bold in war,"
attributed also to the same Cynewulf, is filled by the sound of the sea;
all the sonorities of the ocean are heard, with the cadence and the
variety of the ancient Scandinavian sagas; a multitude of picturesque
and living expressions designate a ship: "Foamy-necked it fareth, likest
unto a bird it glideth over ocean;" it follows the path of the swans,
and of the whales, borne by the ocean stream "to the rolling of the
waters ... the clashing of the sea-streams ... the clash of the waves."
The sea of these poets, contrary to what Tacitus thought, was not a
slumbering sea; it quivers, it foams, it sings.

St. Andrew decides to punish by a miracle the wild inhabitants of the
land of Mermedonia. We behold, as in the Northern sagas, an impressive
scene, and a fantastic landscape: "He saw by the wall, wondrous fast
upon the plain, mighty pillars, columns standing driven by the storm,
the antique works of giants....

"Hear thou, marble stone! by the command of God, before whose face all
creatures shall tremble, ... now let from thy foundation streams bubble
out ... a rushing stream of water, for the destruction of men, a gushing
ocean!...

"The stone split open, the stream bubbled forth; it flowed over the
ground, the foaming billows at break of day covered the earth...."

The sleeping warriors are awakened by this "bitter service of beer."
They attempt to "fly from the yellow stream, they would save their lives
in mountain caverns"; but an angel "spread abroad over the town pale
fire, hot warlike floods," and barred them the way; "the waves waxed,
the torrents roared, fire-sparks flew aloft, the flood boiled with its
waves;" on all sides were heard groans and the "death-song."[92] Let us
stop; but the poet continues; he is enraptured at the sight; no other
description is so minutely drawn. Ariosto did not find a keener delight
in describing with leisurely pen the bower of Alcina.

The religious poets of the Anglo-Saxons open the graves; the idea of
death haunts them as much as it did their pagan ancestors; they look
intently at the "black creatures, grasping and greedy," and follow the
process of decay to the end. They address the impious dead: "It would
have been better for thee very much, ... that thou hadst been created a
bird, or a fish in the sea, or like an ox upon the ea