The love of war is almost as marked in the Christian poetry.  There are vivid pictures of battle against the heathen and the enemies of God, as shown by the following selection from one of the poems of the Caedmonian cycle:—­

  “Helmeted men went from the holy burgh,
  At the first reddening of dawn, to fight: 
  Loud stormed the din of shields. 
  For that rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood,
  And the black raven, slaughter-greedy bird."[23]

Judith, a fragment of a religious poem, is aflame with the spirit of war.  One of its lines tells how a bird of prey—­

  “Sang with its horny beak the song of war.”

This very line aptly characterizes one of the emphatic qualities of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

The poems often describe battle as if it were an enjoyable game.  They mention the “Play of the spear” and speak of “putting to sleep with the sword,” as if the din of war were in their ears a slumber melody.

One of the latest of Anglo-Saxon poems, The Battle of Brunanburh, 937, is a famous example of war poetry.  We quote a few lines from Tennyson’s excellent translation:—­

  “Grimly with swords that were sharp from the grindstone,
  Fiercely we hack’d at the flyers before us.
       * * * * *
  Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke
  Seven strong earls of the army of Anlaf
  Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers.”

Love of the Sea.—­The Anglo-Saxon fondness for the sea has been noted, together with the fact that this characteristic has been transmitted to the more recent English poetry.  Our forefathers rank among the best seamen that the world has ever known.  Had they not loved to dare an unknown sea, English literature might not have existed, and the sun might never have risen on any English flag.

The scop sings thus of Beowulf’s adventure on the North Sea:—­

  “Swoln were the surges, of storms ’twas the coldest,
  Dark grew the night, and northern the wind,
  Rattling and roaring, rough were the billows."[24]

In the Seafarer, the scop also sings:—­

  “My mind now is set,
  My heart’s thought, on wide waters,
  The home of the whale;
  It wanders away
  Beyond limits of land.
       * * * * *
  And stirs the mind’s longing
  To travel the way that is trackless."[25]

In the Andreas, the poet speaks of the ship in one of the most charming of Saxon similes:—­

  “Foaming Ocean beats our steed:  full of speed this boat is;
  Fares along foam-throated, flieth on the wave,
  Likest to a bird."[26]

Some of the most striking Saxon epithets are applied to the sea.  We may instance such a compound as _=ar-ge-bland_ (_=ar_, “oar”; blendan, “to blend"), which conveys the idea of the companionship of the oar with the sea.  From this compound, modern poets have borrowed their “oar-disturbed sea,” “oared sea,” “oar-blending sea,” and “oar-wedded sea.”  The Anglo-Saxon poets call the sun rising or setting in the sea the mere-candel.  In Beowulf, mere-str=aeta, “sea-streets,” are spoken of as if they were the easily traversed avenues of a town.