"O Cuchulain," cried Ferdiad, when Gae Bulg pierced him, "it was not right that I should fall by your hand! My end is come, my ribs will not hold my heart. I have not done well in the battle."
Then Cuchulain ran toward him and put his two arms about him, and laid him by the ford northward. And he began to keen and lament: "What are joy and shouting to me now? It is to madness I am driven after the thing I have done. O Ferdiad, there will never be born among the men of Connaught who will do deeds equal to yours!
"O Ferdiad, you were betrayed to your death! You to die, I to be living. Our parting for ever is a grief for ever! We gave our word that to the end of time we would not go against each other.
"Dear to me was your beautiful ruddiness, dear to me your comely form, dear to me your clear gray eye, dear your wisdom and your talk, and dear to me our friendship!
"It was not right you to fall by my hand; it was not a friendly ending. My grief! I loved the friend to whom I have given a drink of red blood. O Ferdiad, this thing will hang over me for ever! Yesterday you were strong as a mountain. And now there is nothing but a shadow!"
A very great modern poet, Coleridge, who wrote "The Ancient Mariner," said that prose was words in their best order, but that _poetry was the best words in their best order_. This is a simple and good definition of poetry. Yet there is even more than best words in their best order in the room beyond the door over which is written _Poetry_. Perhaps, however, beautiful words in their best order would always teach us to find what is beautiful and to love the good. I do not know. Do you?
Cædmon's poem, written about 670, marks the beginning of English poetry in Great Britain, for "Beowulf" was first sung in another land--the land of the conquerors of England--before it was brought to British soil. The verses of Cædmon's poetry are as stormy as the sea which beats at the bottom of the cliffs of Whitby, on which rose the monastery of Streoneshalh. Cædmon was at first a servant in this monastery, but when the power to sing came to him it lifted not only Cædmon himself to something better than he had been; it has also lifted men and women ever since to better ways of thinking and feeling and to greater happiness than they would ever have had without English poetry. Bede, who wrote about Cædmon, said, "He did not learn the art of poetry from men, nor of men, but from God." Cædmon sang many songs, chiefly songs about stories in the Bible. Our first poetry was religious. "Dark and true and tender is the north," and true and tender is all great English poetry since that most precious of all the golden doors was thrown open in the Great Palace of English Literature.