Also notice that humans have entered the story now, so the wonders Caedmon lists are in relation to us-or "men's sons," as the poem puts it, masculinely (FYI, Caedmon: women live here too). Now Caedmon goes into a little more detail with these wonders and gives us a chronology. So, to recap this heckuva sentence from line 1 to line 4, we have: It's time to start praising God, his power and his awesome creative plans, and particularly his work in the universe creating everything from scratch. All of the wonderful things in the universe-the sun, the continents, the herbivores, you name it-have their beginning in God. That leaves us with this: "when he of wonders of every one.the beginning established." Or, in other words: when God established the beginning of every wonder. Think back to HP: in the sentence "Harry Potter, the boy wizard, rocks," both "Harry Potter" and "the boy wizard" function as the subject. That means "eternal Lord" is also the subject. First, eliminate "eternal Lord," another re-titling of God and an appositive of "he" in line 3. The syntax here is a little tricky, so let's break it down. This becomes important in the rest of lines 3-4 because then we get a mini-description of just how God fathered this glory. The first part of line 3 is another appositive, this time providing a further description of line 2, which told us about God the architect and his "mind-plans." Here Caedmon re-phrases this as "work" and re-titles God as the "Glory-Father," emphasizing that he is the parent of all glory.
annnd we're still in the same sentence here, but hold tight, because a period is in sight at the end of line 4. He work of the Glory-Father, when he of wonders of every one, For more on how alliteration became a calling card for all major Anglo-Saxon poetry, see "Form and Meter." And look out for more alliterating words below! What's the effect of putting three M-sounds in a single line? For Anglo-Saxon poets, alliteration was a way of organizing the line around its four stresses and that big space in the middle. For example, if you were to say, "Harry Potter, the boy-wizard," it's clear that "boy-wizard" is a further description or appositive of the first word, "Harry Potter." In this case, line 2 is continuing the description of "heaven-kingdom's Guardian" in the first line.Ĭaedmon describes God in another metaphor as a kind of architect, a "Measurer" whose power is exercised through something called "mind-plans." These might just be "thoughts," but the addition of "plans" in this kenning makes them seem more architectural, like God is doodling with a compass in his head, figuring out the circumference of the world, the depths of the oceanic basins, the height of the sky-you know, the easy stuff.
Keep your eyes open for more examples.Īnd while you're at it: Mind the Gap! That cavernous space dividing the line in half is called a caesura, or pause, and it helps to organize each line's orderly system of stresses and alliteration (for more, see "Form and Meter").Ĭaedmon continues his praising with this descriptive appositive, a noun phrase following another word or phrase that continues to describe or identify it. This line gets the metaphors going with "heaven-kingdom's Guardian." "Heaven-kingdom" is an example of a specific form of Anglo-Saxon compound word called a kenning (see more under "Imagery."). God is the subject of this poetic awe and admiration, but he doesn't appear as just "God." Heck no. Speaking in the first-person plural (technical term for "we"), the speaker in the hymn declares that it's time to get our praising on. Now we must praise heaven-kingdom's Guardian,
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