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Old English religious poetry includes the poem Christ by Cynewulf and the poem The Dream of the Rood, preserved in both manuscript form and on the Ruthwell Cross. We do have some secular poetry; in fact a great deal of medieval literature was written in verse, including the Old English epic Beowulf .
The Old English poetry which has received the most attention deals with what has been termed the Germanic heroic past. Scholars suggest that Old English heroic poetry was handed down orally from generation to generation. [42] As Christianity began to appear, re-tellers often recast the tales of Christianity into the older heroic stories.
The Nineteen Old Poems were written at this time, though how they came about is the subject of debate. [19] Poetry during this period abandoned tetrasyllabic verse in favor of pentasyllabic verse. The ballads of Chu spread through China and became widely popular, often focusing on concepts of inevitable destiny and fate. [20]
A more dangerous attack came from Joseph Ritson, whose pamphlet Observations on the Three First Volumes of the History of English Poetry, bitterly tore into Warton for the many mistranscriptions, misinterpretations, and errors of fact that his book, as the very first attempt to map the Middle English world, inevitably contained. [16]
This poem marks the introduction into an English context of the classical pastoral, a mode of poetry that assumes an aristocratic audience with a certain kind of attitude to the land and peasants. The explorations of love found in the sonnets of William Shakespeare and the poetry of Walter Raleigh and others also implies a courtly audience.
The poem refers to a group of people called the Wicinga cynn, which may be the earliest mention of the word "Viking" (lines 47, 59, 80). It closes with a brief comment on the importance and fame offered by poets like Widsith, with many pointed reminders of the munificent generosity offered to tale-singers by patrons "discerning of songs".
Against a tide of weariness, I have two pieces of advice on this Earth Day, embedded in National Poetry Month: start a garden, and read or write a poem, writes Tess Taylor.
The Graveyard School's melancholy was not new to English poetry, but rather a continuation of that of previous centuries; there is even an elegiac quality to the poems almost reminiscent of Anglo-Saxon literature. [4] The characteristics and style of Graveyard poetry is not unique to them, and the same themes and tone are found in ballads and odes.