But you must not think of these people, in the midst of whom Alfred was born, as just warriors. They loved their homes, and their poetry is full of love for their families and for the dear old home-place, wherever it happened to be. Besides home-loving poetry, the gleemen sang many religious poems to which the little Alfred listened. Among them was the story of Cædmon, as I have said. We hear, too, of warrior saints, good men who did not go out to slay a fire-spewing dragon lying on a heap of gold, as did Beowulf, but who taught them how to fight the dragon of evil which lurks somewhere near or within us all the time. It is this sort of golden and every-day victory that not only Cædmon, the cowherd, sings, but also Cynewulf, who lived during the last half of the eighth century. Cynewulf was a minstrel at the court of one of the Northumbrian kings--just such a minstrel or gleeman as Alfred sometimes listened to on many a night when he was committing to memory some stirring or beautiful Anglo-Saxon poem. This poet-singer loved the sea with all his heart, and his poetry is full of this love. And in our own day, eleven centuries later, Tennyson wrote poems in their spirit not unlike Old English poems. There is one called "The Sailor Boy" which resembles an Anglo-Saxon poem called "The Seafarer." It is a spirited little poem and begins: He rose at dawn and, fired with hope, Shot o'er the sultry harbour-bar, And reached the ship and caught the rope, And whistled to the morning star. God help me! save I take my part Of danger on the roaring sea, A devil rises in my heart, Far worse than any death to me. That devil is, of course, the devil of idleness, of uselessness. These stanzas are worth memorizing. You can see the spirit of a poet sometimes has a very long life. Here is one of the Old English riddles: On the sand I stayed, by the sea-wall near, All beside the surge-inflowing! Firm I sojourned there, Where I first was fastened. Only few of men Watched among the waste where I wonned on the earth. But the brown-backed billow, at each break of day, With its water-arms enwrapt me! Little weened I then, That I e'er should speak, in the after-days, Mouthless o'er the mead-bench.... What do you think that meant? A reed flute--a little flute on which one played a song. When Christianity came to England, as it did in 597 with St. Augustine, almost three hundred years before little Alfred was born, it made men care less for warfare and more for Christ. It is difficult to do what Christ told us to do--love one another, and at the same time fight one another. And that we should love one another was the great new message of Christianity. Christ was in men's minds, however, in those olden days, not only our gentle Saviour, but also a hero who went forth to war. * * * * *