Analecta Anglo-saxonica: Selections, in Prose and Verse, from the Anglo-Saxon Literature: with an Introductory Ethnological Essay, and Notes, Critical and Explanatory, Volume 2G.P. Putnam, 1856 - English literature |
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Page 194 - Its chief and umversal characteristic was a very regular alliieration, so arranged that, in every couplet, there should be two principal words in the first line beginning with the same letter, which letter must also be the initial of the first word on which the stress of the voice falls in the second line.
Page 211 - Thrice Holy He, The Spirit Son of Deity ! He call'd from nothing1 into birth Each fair production of the teeming earth ; He bids the faithful and the just aspire To join in endless bliss Heaven's angel choir. His love bestows on human kind Each varied excellence of mind. To some his Spirit-gift affords The power and mastery of words : So may the wiser sons of earth proclaim In speech and measured song, the glories of his name. Some the tuneful hand may ply, And loud before the list'ning throng, Wake...
Page 211 - Heaven's righteous laws to scan, Or trace the courses of the starry host, To these the writer's learned toil to plan, To these the battle's pride and victor's boast ; Where in the well-fought field the war-troop pour Full on the wall of shields the arrows flickering shower.
Page 185 - Swithun,' about the last and best of these Saxon Latinists. Respecting the second class to whom we have alluded, we shall only quote a few remarks from Mr Wright. Of Caedmon he says — ' While, men of higher rank and education were labouring to introduce among their countrymen the language and literature of Rome, we find a person rising out of the common orders of the people, under remarkable circumstances, to Christianize and refine the vernacular poetry. No name has of late years excited more...
Page 215 - Anglia; as for instance, the high terms of praise in which Offa is mentioned; both our poem and the Traveller's Song, describing him at some length as one of the most powerful and glorious of kings. But above all, the utter ignorance manifested by the author of Beowulf of all the minuter traditions current in Denmark; the German, far more than the Norse version of Sigurdr's story, which coincides closely enough with the Nibelunge Not, and rejects the contents of nearly the whole second volume of...
Page 192 - Csedmon's poems were exceedingly beautiful we have Bede's own testimony, a man well skilled in and much attached to the poetry of his forefathers ; and that they were by no means easy to compose, we may be convinced by a comparison of the older religious poetry with that which was certainly written at a later period, (when the minstrel, though he still existed, was no more the same personage he had been,) such as the metrical translations from Boethius attributed to King Alfred. The terms in which...
Page 12 - ... he let hine swa micles [wealdan. hehstne to him on heofona rice, haefde he hine swa hwitne [geworhtne, 255 swa wynlic waes his waestm on heofonum: baet him com [from weroda drihtne.
Page 211 - ... vertice, quae totum despicit una nemus, et conversa novos Phoebi nascentis ad ortus expectat radios et iubar exoriens. atque ubi Sol pepulit fulgentis limina portae et primi emicuit luminis aura levis...
Page 211 - Mors illi Venus est, sola est in morte voluptas. Ut possit nasci, appetit ante mori. Ipsa sibi proles suus est pater et suus heres Nutrix ipsa sui, semper alumna sibi. Ipsa quidem, sed non eadem, quia et ipsa nee ipsa est Aeternam vitam mortis adepto bono.