In the presence of many wise men did Hild bid Cædmon tell his dream and sing his verses. And he did as he was told, and it was plain to all that an angel had visited Cædmon. The Abbess Hild took him into the monastery, and she ordered that everything be done for him. And Cædmon became the first and one of the greatest of English poets. And even as Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem, English poetry was born in a cattle-fold in a town which was called Streoneshalh, which means "Bay of the Beacon." And to mankind since Cædmon, the first English poet, English song has been a beacon to all the world. * * * * * If you open a book written in the English of to-day, it is easy to read it--just as easy as to understand the speech we use among one another. But the English of fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago would be difficult to read. There is an illustration of this English in a line from "Deor's Lament": Thas ofer eode, thisses swa maeg. It is easy to pick this out word for word, and see that it means, "That was overcome (or overpassed), so may this be." The English in that Great Palace, some of whose doors are more than twelve hundred years old, is the same English, just as the oak-tree two hundred years old is the same oak-tree, though different, that it was when planted. But you would find it difficult to read the English in which Cædmon wrote his great poems. Old English poetry, too, seems as different from the poetry of to-day as the language we speak seems different from the language they used to speak. For one thing, old English poetry did not have rhymes. Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life and bade thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? This poem was written somewhat over a hundred years ago by William Blake, but it is modern and part of that brightest and most beautiful room of all English poetry--Nineteenth Century Poetry. What is a rhyme? You can tell if you will study this stanza from "The Lamb." You will see that "thee" of the first line rhymes with "thee" of the second, that "feed" and "mead" rhyme, and that "delight" and "bright" rhyme just as "voice" and "rejoice." Old English poetry was different, too, in that it did not count the syllables in a line of poetry. If you drum on the table and count the syllables of the first and second lines, you will see that each has six, and the following six lines have seven syllables each, and the last two six each. Then if you drum a little more you will see that each of the first two lines has three accents or stresses, and the following six four accents or stresses each.