Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days | Page 4

men and
the students, and by her desire the dream was told to them, and the
songs sung to them that they might all judge what this might be and
whence the gift had come. And they were all sure that a divine gift had
been bestowed on Caedmon by God Himself. They gave him a holy
story and words of divine lore, and bad him sing them if he could,
putting them into the measure of verse. In the morning he came back,
having set them in most beautiful poetry. And after that the Abbess had
him instructed, and he left the life in the world for the religious life. We
are told by St Bede that he made much beautiful verse, being taught
much holy lore and making songs so winsome to hear that his teachers
themselves learned at his mouth.
"He sang of the creation of earth and the making of man, and the
history of Genesis, and the going out of the Israelites from the land of
the Egyptians, and their entering into the Land of Promise, and many
other stories told in the Books of the Canon. He also sang concerning
the Humanity of Christ and about His Passion and His Ascension, and
about the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the teaching of the Apostles.
And he sang also of the Judgement to come and of the sweetness of the
Kingdom of Heaven. About these things he made many songs, as well
as about the Divine goodness and judgment. And this poet always had
before him the desire to draw men away from the love of sin and of evil
doing, and to make them earnestly desire to do good deeds."
At last a fair end was set upon his life when, glad of heart, full of love
to those around him, he received Holy Viaticum, and prayed and signed
himself with the Holy Sign, and entered sweetly into his rest.
This is the story told for the most part, as it is best to tell it in the way
in which St Bede recorded it; and Alfred rendered it into the English of
his day, from which English I have now taken it.

CHAPTER II
Caedmon and his influence. Poem, "Genesis." "The Fall of The
Angels." "Exodus," English a war-loving race. Destruction of the
Egyptians, Fate and the Lord of Fate.
We possess poems on the subjects which St Bede tells us that Caedmon
wrote upon, but we cannot be sure that any of these are actually that
poet's work. St Bede tells us that many others after him wrote noble
songs, but he sets Caedmon's work above that of all those others as
having been the product of a gift direct from God. In any case he must
have influenced those who wrote later than he. All our work whether
we are poets, thinkers, fighters, craftsmen, servants, tradesfolk, teachers,
must be only partly in what we do directly. This can to some extent be
measured. We can tell how many hours' work we have done in a day;
how many books we have written in a life's working-time; how much
faithful service we have consciously offered. But by far the larger part
of our work we cannot know. We cannot know how much we may have
influenced others for good, we cannot calculate the effect that we have
had upon them, and, through them, upon others. And to apply this
thought specially to a poet, we may say that what he has done for
others by suggesting, by stimulating, by inspiring, is not only a most
valuable part of his work, but also an immeasurable part. A poet may
inspire another poet simply to sing; or he may inspire him to sing on
subjects akin to those dearest to himself; and the second poet, or the
third or fourth, as it may be, may sing better than the first. But all the
same, he owes it to the first poet, and, in a sense, the work of the latter
poet is a part of the work of the earlier.
The poem "Genesis" is known to be the work of at least two people:
part of it is a version of an old Saxon paraphrase of the Old Testament,
and must have been written later than Caedmon's time. It is always
interesting to know who it was that wrote work we care for, but it is a
more important matter to possess the work itself. People in old times
did not seem to care much whether their names were known or not. The
author, for example, of the book which for so long has been read and
studied and cherished as one of the Church's most treasured possessions,

the "Imitation of Christ," remained for a