Such ardours are scarcely imaginable in the later ages of a nation; but in Bede's day a people accepting the 'glad tidings' was glad; and, unambitious as his style is of the ornamental or the figurative, it is brightened by that which it so faithfully describes. His chronicle is often poetry, little as he intended it to be such; nay, it is poetry in her 'humanities' yet more than in her distinctively spiritual province, and better poetry than is to be found in the professed poetry of a materialistic age, when the poet is tempted to take refuge from the monotony of routine life, either amid the sensational accidents to be found on the byeways, not the highways, of life, or in some sickly dreamland that does not dare to deal with life, and belongs neither to the real nor to the ideal. In nothing is Bede's history of that great age, to which our own owes all that it possesses of real greatness, more striking than in that spirit of unconscious elevation and joyousness which belongs to the Christian life it records, a joyousness often so strikingly contrasted with the sadness--sometimes a heroic sadness--to be found in portions of his work describing pagan manners. With all its violences and inconsistencies, the seventh century was a noble age--an age of strong hearts which were gentle as well as strong, of a childhood that survived in manhood, of natures that had not lost their moral unity, of holy lives and of happy deaths. Bede's picture of it is a true one; and for that reason it comes home to us. To some it may seem a profaneness to turn those old legends into verse. I should not have attempted the enterprise if they were much read in prose. The verse may at least help to direct the attention of a few readers to them. From them the thoughtful will learn how to complete a 'half-truth' often reiterated. Those who have declared that 'the wars of the Heptarchy are as dull as the battles of kites and crows,' have not always known that the true interest of her turbulent days belonged to peace, not to war, and is to be found in the spiritual development of the Anglo-Saxon race. CONTENTS. PAGE ODIN THE MAN 1 KING ETHELBERT OF KENT AND ST. AUGUSTINE 13 THE CONSECRATION OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY 32 THE PENANCE OF ST. LAURENCE 47 KING SIGEBERT OF EAST ANGLIA, AND HEIDA THE PROPHETESS 66 KING SIGEBERT OF ESSEX, OR A FRIEND AT NEED 84 KING OSWALD OF NORTHUMBRIA, OR THE BRITON'S REVENGE 100 CEADMON THE COWHERD, THE FIRST ENGLISH POET 117 KING OSWY OF NORTHUMBRIA, OR THE WIFE'S VICTORY 142 THE VENGEANCE OF THE MONKS OF BARDENEY 162 HOW SAINT CUTHBERT KEPT HIS PENTECOST AT CARLISLE 176 SAINT FRIDESWIDA, OR THE FOUNDATIONS OF OXFORD 208