Cynewulf,[90] one of the few poets of the Anglo-Saxon period known by name, and the greatest of all, feels the pangs of despair; and then rises to ecstasies, moved by religious love; he speaks of his return to Christ with a passionate fervour, foreshadowing the great conversions of the Puritan epoch. He ponders over his thoughts "in the narrowness of night ... I was stained with my deeds, bound by my sins, buffeted with sorrows, bitterly bound, with misery encompassed...." Then the cross appears to him in the depths of heaven, surrounded by angels, sparkling with jewels, flowing with blood. A sound breaks through the silence of the firmament; life has been given to "the best of trees," and it speaks: "It was long ago, yet I remember it, that I was cut down, at the end of a wood, stirred from my sleep." The cross is carried on the top of a mountain: "Then the young hero made ready, 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.