A maiden unmatched, a virgin of virtue.
On earth I endured insult and injury, 535
Affliction and agony. Kings and counselors
Conspired against me, plotting my death.
My time was fulfilled—I had lived among you
Thirty-three years before my suffering started,
My painful passion. Always I remembered 540
The multitudes here, their torture and torment,
Their lament and longing for a Savior to come
To lead them from hell to their proper homeland,
Where they could delight in holy bliss
Not hideous fire, in the Lord’s embrace 545
Not the devil’s clutch. At home in heaven
You will know the Lord’s generosity of joy,
The gift of bliss, a thousand-fold delight,
A radiant reward. I interceded for you
On the tree of torment, that blessed beam, 550
The gallows of glory where men mocked me,
Scourged me, struck me with a spear.
God in a body, I bore that pain,
Rising in glory to my homeland in heaven,
Returning to the arms of the holy Lord.” 555
So the Guardian of glory, Lord of mankind,
Spoke these words early in the morning
On which the Lord God arose from the dead.
No stone was so strong, even wrapped with iron,
That it could resist God’s might. The Lord of angels 560
Emerged from the sepulcher, ordering his angels
To summon the eleven worthy disciples,
And say to Simon Peter that he would once again
Be permitted to gaze upon God in Galilee,
Eternal and steadfast, as he had done before. 565
I’ve heard that the disciples departed for Galilee,
Inspired by the spirit and the news of the Lord.
There they recognized the holy Son of God,
Seeing the spot where the Lord stood.
The faithful followers ran to the place 570
Where the eternal one was and bowed humbly
At the feet of the Savior, thanking their Master
For this last reunion with the Shaper of angels,
The Sustainer of men. Then Simon Peter spoke:
“Is that you, Lord, clothed in glory, 575
Our radiant Redeemer? We saw you that time,
Bound by heathens, mocked and reviled,
With a crown of thorns on your innocent head.
Those unholy tormentors will regret that torture
When they come before you at the end of their days.” 580
But some of the disciples doubted in their hearts
That this was their beloved. One called Didymus
Had to place his hand on the Savior’s side
To feel the wound where God shed his blood,
The tears of baptism for all of mankind. 585
The Lord’s passion was a precious act of love.
Christ climbed on the cross, the gallows of God,
Bleeding salvation for his beloved children.
All of mankind on middle-earth should thank
Our suffering Savior and eternal Lord 590
With words and works for breaking our chains,
Unshackling us from sin, harrowing hell,
And leading us blissfully homeward to heaven,
Where we will dwell forever in the land of delight,
Where God’s glory, the Redeemer’s radiance, 595
Will be revealed to the righteous as their just reward.
Then the eternal Lord was attended by his followers
For forty days and revealed to mankind
Before his holy spirit ascended into heaven
To the divine music of celestial clouds, 600
Lifted up by the hand of God,
While thousands of angels hymned him home.
Then Christ the Savior solemnly declared
That ten days later he would appear again
To the twelve apostles, his dear disciples, 605
To strengthen them with the gift of his spirit.
The living Lord, Redeemer of mankind,
Had restored to life many faithful souls.
Judas was not one of them—he had knowingly
Betrayed his blessed Lord, sent him to sacrifice, 610
Sold him for silver. He discovered his bad bargain
When the devil paid him back for his sin in hell,
The price of his soul, hell’s dark reward.
Now the Son sits at the Father’s right hand,
Offering the heart’s healing, the soul’s salvation, 615
The measure of mercy, to the children of earth.
We know that he is Maker and Ruler,
Shaper and Sustainer of all creatures.
The holiest angel sits in heaven,
Abides with his saints, prophets and patriarchs. 620
The Son of glory sits on his throne,
Surrounded by sky. He hearkens us home
Through his healing mercy, his steadfast love,
Drawing us upward to live in the light,
The revealed radiance of our holy Redeemer, 625
Where he holds his court and dwells in delight.
Let’s always remember to eagerly obey
Our Lord and Savior, to please Christ.
That is a finer treasure, a deeper delight,
Than any we can find in this earthly life. 630
Now the glorious Prince, almighty God,
Will come to us all on Judgment Day.
He will order archangels to blow the trumpets
Above the cities, towns, and villages,
Over all the earth. The dead will arise 635
Out of the dust of their opening graves,
Revived in the end by the Redeemer’s might.
That will surely be the longest of days,
The loudest of tumults, when the ruling Savior
Comes through the clouds to divide the hosts 640
Into fair and foul, blessed and baleful,
Saved and sent down. At his right hand
The righteous and just, the true and trusted,
Will ascend in bliss to the holy city
To rest forever in the presence of God. 645
He will welcome them home to heaven, saying:
“You are welcome guests. Enter my kingdom,
Lifted in love to the light of glory,
Resting forever in eternal bliss.”
At the Lord’s left hand, sinners will tremble, 650
Threatened by doom when the Son of God
Comes to judge them. They may dare to dream
With false hopes in their faithless hearts
That they will ascend to the city of angels
As the faithful did, but the light will dawn 655
A little too late, and the Lord will declare:
“You are banned from bliss. Descend with the damned
Into a prison of pain, an unholy hell-home,
A place of punishment. I know you not.”
Then the cursed demons will slink out of hell, 660
Summon and snatch them, thrust them by thousands
Into the gulf of guilt, the chasm of pain,
The abyss of agony. The can never return
From the prison of peril. Shackled in sin,
Bound in shame, they will endlessly endure 665
A chilling reception, a ravenous welcome,
The devil’s delight of torment and torture,
The scorn and scourging of whipping words
And taunting flames. The black hounds of hell
Will accuse them of feuds, plots and intrigues, 670
Proud boasts and pernicious deeds,
Of ignoring their noble Lord in their hearts,
Where their hopes should have found a home.
So let us st
rive to serve our Savior,
Obey his commands, bearing in mind 675
The heart’s hunger for Christ’s healing,
The soul’s quest for God’s grace,
Our whole life’s longing to finally rest
With the heaven-bright Savior, the Son of God.
The gates of heaven are adorned with gold, 680
Decked with gems, treasured tokens
Of the Lord’s generosity, his precious joy.
The walls of heaven are alive with angels
And blessed souls, living in the light,
Gathering glory, radiant with rapture. 685
The halls of heaven are full of martyrs
Whose lives and works honor God
And who sing out their holy praises to him:
“You are the Prince of heaven, Protector of men,
Origin of angels and all of creation, 690
Righteous Judge, Ruler and Redeemer.
Now you have led the offspring of earth,
The children of men, your faithful family,
Here to our blessed home in heaven.”
The Lord’s thanes gather round his throne, 695
Praising his majesty and mercy, power and purpose.
He climbed on the cross to suffer his passion,
Enduring death so that we might live.
That gallows grace is no small gift.
[Now we recall how Christ was tempted 700
To sin by Satan in the world’s wilderness]
Where he first fasted for forty days
In the fullness of purity, the sustenance of mercy.
Then that wretched angel wrought by God,
Who rebelled against his own Creator 705
And was cast down from heaven for his crime,
Decided to tempt Christ, the King of creation,
Hauling flat stones to the holy one,
Taunting the Savior, saying maliciously:
“Lord, if you’re hungry, transform these stones 710
Into loaves of bread, if you wield such power.”
Then the Lord responded to the snares of Satan:
“Do you not know, demon, that it is written
[That man shall not live by bread alone,
But by every word from the mouth of God.] 715
* * *
For the Lord of victory, Light of the living,
Will reward the righteous with a home in heaven
Along with those angels, trusted and true,
Who will share an endless, unfallen joy.”
* * *
Then Satan, that insolent, hideous creature, 720
Seized Christ in his scornful clutch,
Lifting the Healer on his sinful shoulders,
Bearing him up to a high mountain
In malicious rage, where he tried his best
To tempt the Savior with devious words: 725
“Lord, look now upon the inhabitants of earth.
I offer you power over all these people,
The chance to rule this worldly realm.
Reign over all of heaven and earth
If you are truly the king of creation, 730
The lord of angels, the guardian of men,
As you seem to believe from your previous words.”
Then the eternal Lord answered the devil:
“Go back to your hell-hole, unholy Satan—
You cursed God and earned the abyss. 735
What waits for you there is torment and terror,
Not blessing and bliss. I command you now,
Prince of darkness, by the power of light,
That you offer no hope to any of the inhabitants
In the hallways of hell, bear home no tales 740
Of how you tempted the true Lord of heaven—
Only the horror story of how you failed
And were thrown down by your righteous Ruler,
Maker of mankind, King of creation.
Go back to hell—turn tail and run! 745
Your prison is endless by any measure,
A terrible hell-hole, a grim grave-house.
Mark out its length with your demon hands.
Try finding its floor, computing its depth,
Measuring its width, the length of its fire, 750
The angle of its air. How many feet down
Is the end of the abyss? How deep is its darkness?
How far does that grim grave-house extend?
Finally you will know how great God is,
How foolish your sins, how pitiful your power, 755
How unwise your rebellion. Go home to hell
With your calculating grasp, your unkind clutch.
Take a couple of hours for this endless task.
See if you learn anything from the eternal abyss.”
Then misery moved up behind Satan, 760
Vengeance crept up to seize the vile demon.
The evil one fled like a fury into hell.
He fell down darkly into a pit of pain.
Sometimes he tried to measure the agony,
The torment and terror, with his fierce fist. 765
Sometimes he tried to grasp the fury
Of the dark flames with his fallen mind,
But he could never fathom the depths of fire.
Sometimes he saw his friends, now fiends,
Lying in hell. Sometimes he heard 770
The wretched lament of lost souls,
Exiled from the Lord. They shrieked in pain
When they saw Satan. The rebels from heaven
Now suffered in hell a dreaded doom.
When the evil demon found the floor, 775
Satan sensed that the gates of hell
Were a hundred thousand miles away
And understood how Christ the Lord
In his craft and power had commanded him
To measure his own endless agony. 780
As the fiend glared with his abominable eyes
Across the abyss at the endless horror,
The unholy host began to wail
As terror seized and twisted their hearts.
They hated Satan and reviled his judgment, 785
Railing at their lost leader, their fallen lord:
“You led us out of heaven into living hell,
Dreaming of evil, denying the good.
Now you exist in this unholy agony,
Living in pain, loathsome to us, 790
Suffering forever, as well you should,
For you have never wished for any good!”
This is the end of Book II. Amen.
THE VERCELLI BOOK
INTRODUCTION
I am the silent voice singing in a house of books
Far from my original home. Who made me,
And who carried me, a dear clutch of words,
On the way to Rome, no one knows.
I contain and celebrate the song of the rood,
The voice and vision of Christ’s cross
In a dreamer’s mind, homilies on virtue and vice,
The bliss of heaven, the bale of hell,
The story of a saint who struggles with a demon,
The discovery of the cross by Constantine’s mother,
The fates of the apostles, many of them martyred,
And the soul’s address to its moldering body
In their sober reunion on the day of doom.
Who knows what secrets I may reveal
Across the bridge of untraveled time?
Let your mind wander and say what I mean.
The Vercelli Book is a codex housed in the cathedral library of Vercelli in northern Italy. It is a plain manuscript containing 135 folios “written in a bold, firm hand, apparently by a single Anglo-Saxon scribe at some time during the middle of the second half of the tenth century” (Zacher and Orchard, 4). The manuscript is better preserved than any of the other major Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. There are some missing folios an
d some damage from a reagent, probably applied to enhance the readability of the script but which has instead obscured it in places. The book contains the six poems translated here and also some twenty-three pieces of homiletic prose on a variety of religious subjects. The movement between the homiletic prose and poetic texts is as follows (Krapp, 1932a, xvii–xx):
Homiletic prose
Andreas: Andrew in the Country of the Cannibals
The Fates of the Apostles
Homiletic prose
Soul and Body I
Homiletic Fragment I: On Human Deceit
The Dream of the Rood
Homiletic prose
Elene: Helena’s Discovery of the True Cross
The prose life of St. Guthlac
With respect to the so-called homilies, Fulk and Cain explain that “most are sermons, though two are homilies proper … two are largely hagiographical … and two are chiefly close translations of scenes in the life of Christ from the Gospels of John and Pseudo-Matthew, with no real exposition” (75), and they go on to note a number of formal and thematic connections between the homiletic prose and the poetic texts.
How and when the Vercelli Book came to reside in the Italian library remains a subject of some debate, as does the purpose of the particular compilation of texts. Zacher and Orchard summarize this as follows:
The fact that the book left Anglo-Saxon England certainly seems to have aided its survival, as well as fuelling speculation as to how the book might have reached its current home. Since Vercelli was throughout the early Middle Ages a major staging-post on the pilgrim route to Rome, the simplest explanation seems to be that the book was left behind (either as a gift or as a relic) by some presumably wealthy Anglo-Saxon en route to or from Rome, although other views persist. The original purpose of the compiler (if the single scribe can be so called) has again escaped scholarly consensus, with sharply differing views on the extent to which the collection as a whole can be viewed as having been planned, and on its purpose as a book for public performance or private devotion. (4)
Even though the Vercelli Book resides in a library far from most other OE texts, it is not in form and substance a thing apart. Zacher and Orchard note a number of connections between the texts in the Vercelli Book and other Old English texts. For example, there are two runically signed Cynewulfian poems in the Vercelli Book and two in the Exeter Book, a Body and Soul poem in each of the same two collections, and parallels between Andreas and Beowulf and between The Dream of the Rood and other OE religious texts ranging from the riddles to the Ruthwell Cross (4–5; see Orchard, 2009, for the various Rood cross-references). Finally, even though the Vercelli Book admittedly is “a manuscript that crosses and has crossed a number of temporal, generic, and literary boundaries” (Zacher and Orchard, 5), it does seem to be a more consciously compiled and ordered collection than the Exeter Book.
The Complete Old English Poems Page 27