Praise for The Dream of the Rood has been uniformly generous. Charles W. Kennedy [The Earliest English Poetry, 1943] declares that it deserves "pre-eminent distinction as a superb lyric presentation of a religious adoration which finds its symbol in the Cross." In discussing possible sources for the poem, [Bruce] Dickins and [Alan S.C.] Ross mention [in The Dream of the Rood, 1966] the beautiful imagery, and Margaret Schlauch has pointed out [in "The Dream of the Rood as Prosopopoeia," in Essays and Studies in Honor of Carleton Brown, 1940] the uniqueness in Old English literature of The Dream of the Rood by virtue of the poet's technique of prosopopoeia: "To endow the cross with power of locution was to use a device of unexampled effectiveness in making vivid an event about which, for all devout Christians, the entire history of the world revolved."

The "effectiveness," then, of the poem has been beyond dispute. Some scholars have tried to determine influences on the poem, most notably H. R. Patch [in his "Liturgical Influence in The Dream of the Rood," PMLA XXIV (1919)], who has found parallels in Latin liturgical hymns, Miss Schlauch, who has pointed out Latin poems using prosopopoeia, and most recently John V. Fleming ["The Dream of the Rood and Anglo-Saxon Monasticism," Traditio XXII (1966)], who finds in the poem "a figurative statement of the main principles of early Benedictine asceticism and a typically monastic view of salvation." But against all source studies of this poem we have the warning by Dickins and Ross that the probable source for the poem was the poet's own emotion.

We must agree with Miss Schlauch that one of the things that make the poem so vivid is the personification of the Cross. But the poet seems also to have another way of making the moment of the crucifixion—or the meaning of the Cross—vivid, and a way which is much more immediate than personification derived from Latin poetry. The poet connects the crucifixion with the second coming of Christ and eternal life. By examining several passages in the Bible dealing with eschatology, particularly the new Jerusalem and the bride of Christ passages, we can see that the poet is able to underscore the significance of the crucifixion by looking forward to the Day of Judgment and the mystical marriage of Christ and the Church.

It is noteworthy that the poet's vision occurs at night, when other men are at rest (11. 1-3). Writing of the second coming of Christ, Paul tells the Thessalonians to be watchful, since "the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night" (I Thess. 5:2). He also reminds them that they are "children of the light," not of darkness:

1. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
2. For they that sleep sleep in the night.

In the vision the Cross is seen in the air, enveloped in light—brightness is its most startling characteristic—and visible at the corners of the earth, which the Cross reaches as it stretches across the sky. Moreover, the Cross is beheld by the host of angels and by men throughout the world. In Matthew, the disciples press Christ for more information about the last days, particularly for the sign of the end (24:3). He replies that temporal signs will be tribulation on earth, and he adds:

1. For as lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. …
2. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
3. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

If one substitutes Christ for the Cross in lines 4-12, he will see how closely this vision follows that of the second coming. The gold and the gems with which the cross is adorned (11. 7, 16) may have their origin in another ac-count of the second coming, the description of the new Jerusalem in Revelation 21. The city, descending from heaven with brilliant light "like unto a stone most precious" (vss. 10-11), is of "pure gold," and its twelve foundations are each of a different gem. The difference between the Cross of Calvary and the Cross "begoten mid golde" or between the old and the new Jerusalem is one of glorification, the transmutation which takes place on Judgment Day.

The Rood not only reminds us of the new Jerusalem but also of the bride of Christ, as the poet develops his imagery along familiar scriptural lines. Throughout the Old Testament, the allegorical use of marriage was to indicate the relationship of God with his people, for example, Isaiah 54:5, Jeremiah 3:14, and Hosea 2:19. In the New Testament, however, Christ replaces Jehovah as the bridegroom, and the Church replaces the Israelites as the bride. Christ refers to himself and to the fact that he will be taken away by the metaphor of the bridegroom in Matthew 9:15; John the Baptist denies that he is the expected savior and mentions Christ as the bridegroom in John 3:28-29. The notion that the Church was the bride of Christ was established by the time that Paul wrote his second letter to the Corinthians: "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (11:2).

When Revelation was written, the bridegroom-bride metaphor had been fully developed in terms of the return of Christ and his marriage to the Church. The writer of Revelation uses it twice, the first time, in Revelation 19, rather simply:

1. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
2. And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
3. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of the Lord.

When he uses it the second time, in Revelation 21, the bride is the new Jerusalem: "And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" (vs. 21).

That the personification of the Cross is amenable to interpretation as representing the Church seems possible on several grounds, not the least of which is the complete passivity of the Cross. It is angry and afraid—it wants to fell Christ's enemies, and it shakes when Christ mounts it—but in everything it exhibits a feminine submission. This passivity is dictated by submission to God's will (11. 35-36); nevertheless, one feels that he is witnessing feminine behavior. By line 90, the Cross can compare its/her prominence to that of Mary herself:

Hwæt, me ka geweorðode wuldres Ealdor
ofer holtwudu, heofonrices Weard,
swylce swa he his modor eac, Marian sylfe,
ælmihtig God, for ealle menn
geweorðode ofer eall wifa cynn.

In addition to this feminine passivity, other details seem to call attention to the Church as the bride of Christ. Dickins and Ross admit perplexity concerning the meaning of wœdum in "Geseah ic wuldres treow/wædum geweorðod wynnum scinan" (11. 14-15). They consider streamers, but state, "It is not at all clear what these are." By translating this passage, "I saw the cross of glory adorned with weeds shine with joys," and by taking the usual meaning of weeds as clothes, could not the sense be lifted from the description of the bride, "arrayed in fine linen," the joys being the heavenly bliss which awaits the faithful? Weeds in the sense of clothes must be the meaning in line 22 in which the cross changes from a covering of sweat to a covering of treasure:

         Geseah ic þæt fuse beacen
wendan wætan 7 bleom: hwilum hit wæs
    mid wætan bestemed,
beswyled mid swates gange, Hwilum mid
    since gegyrwed.

When the Cross begins to speak, it relates how it was cut down at the edge of the woods (1. 29) and commanded to bear criminals (1. 31). It was then set on a (different?) hill(1. 32), from which it saw the Lord of mankind "hasten, very much" toward it (11. 33-34). Miss [Rosemary] Woolf has noted [in her "Doctrinal Influences on The Dream of the Rood," Medium Aevum XXVII (1958)] a series of departures from scriptural accounts of the crucifixion in the Cross's speech, the first being that neither Christ nor Simon of Cyrene carries the cross: "That the cross is already in position and watches Christ advancing to it seems to be the poet's own variation." Other curious details follow.

Ongyred ehine þa geong Hæleð, (þæt wæs
  God ælmihtig),
strang 7 stiðmod. Gestah he on gealgan
  heanne,
modig on manigra gesyhðe, þa he wolde
  mancyn lysan.
Bifode ic þa me se Beorn ymbclypte; ne
  dorste ic hwæðre bugan to eorðan,
feallan to foldan sceatum. Ac ic sceolde
  fæste standan.
[ll. 39-43]

The stripping and the ascent onto the cross are also not found in the scriptures. These three distinct departures from biblical accounts of the crucifixion are interpreted by Miss Woolf as emphasizing "the confidence of divine victory and the voluntariness of Christ's undertaking the Crucifixion."

For the second of the details, the stripping, Miss Woolf maintains that the author "was following a patristic tradition, to be found, for instance, in Ambrose's commentary on Luke, of Christ as Kingly victor removing his clothes.… In The Dream of the Rood Christ is very clearly a hero stripping himself for battle." For the third detail, the poet has, she suggests, directly translated crucem ascendere, one of two "conventional expressions" of Latin hymnody, the result being that "the young hero's advance, and ascent of the Cross, is at once painless and heroic, and is therefore a most admirable symbol of the divine nature of Christ." My quibble with Miss Woolf would be that the crucifixion could hardly be considered painless with all the references to swat and blod, and the understatement, "þurhdrifan hi me mid deorcan næglum" (l. 46). While the account does show Christ's willingness, indeed his eagerness, to embrace his fate, it also reveals the physical details of what happens to a man, rather than a god, on the Cross.

The pattern of the details in lines 33-43 indicates a purpose on the part of the poet which would not exclude Christ's willingness to die. He is seen "efstan elne mycle, þæt he me wolde on gestigan." Then he takes off his clothes and embraces the Cross. Christ is strang as well as stiðmod; he is also modig—all the things that a woman would see and appreciate in a husband. The Cross, moreover, is demure—she trembles when she is embraced. This whole passage is simply a logical extension of the implications of the marriage of Christ and the Church.

The two have now become one. The dark nails are driven through the Cross, and on it are the wounds visible (ll. 46-47). "Bysmeredon hie unc butu ætgædere." Miss Woolf observes: "The cross shares in all the sufferings of Christ, so that it seems to endure a compassion, in the sense in which that word was used in the Middle Ages to describe the Virgin's identification of her feelings with those of her Son in His Passion."

The Cross has reached a nearness to Christ that rivals that of Mary. The interesting statement follows, "Eall ic woes mid blode bestemed, / begoten of þæs Guman sidan" (ll. 48-49). This passage may have a reference to the origin of the Church in it, since Augustine had observed:

At the beginning of the human race the woman was made of a rib taken from the side of the man while he slept; for it seemed fit that even Christ and His Church should be foreshadowed in this event. For that sleep of the man was the death of Christ, whose side, as He hung lifeless upon the cross, was pierced with a spear, and there flowed from it blood and water, and these we know to be the sacraments by which the Church is "built up."

The vision of the Cross therefore is formulated in terms of the imagery of the second coming of Christ and the new Jerusalem, and a kind of marriage consummation takes place on the Cross. Lines 50-77 are taken up with more or less matter-of-fact details from the universal darkness on the day of the crucifixion to the finding of the buried Cross. In lines 78-94, the Cross points out her present state of veneration, and in lines 95 and following the Cross directs the poet to tell the vision to men:

onwreoh wordum  þæt hit is wuldres beam,
se ðe aelmihtig God  on þrowode
for mancynnes  manegum synnum
7 Adomes  ealdgewyrhtum.
Deað he þær byrigde.
[ll. 97-101]

But the Cross does not stop with the crucifixion. Instead, she goes on to relate the resurrection and the ascension, and to outline the second coming, as if these things were included by implication in the account of the crucifixion.

                    Hider eft fundaþ
on þsne middangeard  mancynn secan
on domdæge  Dryhten sylfa,
æmihtig God  7 his englas mid,
þaet he þonne wile deman,  se ah domes
  geweald.
[ll. 103-7]

Furthermore, the question Christ will ask will involve the Cross: "Hwær se man sie, / se ðe for Dryhtnes naman deaðes wolde / biteres onbyrigan, swa he ar on ðam beame dyde" (ll. 112-14). At lines 117 and following we learn that no one needs to be afraid who before bears the "beacna selest" in his breast. The last words that the Cross speaks connect most clearly the Cross to eternal life:

Ac ðþurh ða rode sceal  rice gesecan
of eorðwege  æghwylc sawl,
seo þe mid Wealdende  wunian þenceð.

The poet begins to speak again at line 122, reporting that he prayed to the Cross. His life apparently has been redirected by the vision, since

           Is me nu lifes hyht
þæet ic bone sigebeam  secan mote…
            min mundbyrd is
geriht to þære rode.
[ll. 126-31]

He thinks of his friends briefly, who "lifiað nu on heofenum mid Heahædere," and longs for the day when the Cross will bring him to heaven:

                   þær is blis mycel,
dream on heofonum,  þær is Dryhtnes folc
geseted to symle [i.e. the wedding feast].
[ll. 139-41]

For the poet there is an undeniable connection between the Cross of Calvary and heavenly life.

                     Si me Dryhten freond,
se ðe her on eorþan  ær þrowode
on þam gealgtreowe  for guman synnum:
he us onlysde,  7 us lif forgeaf,
heofonlicne ham.
[ll. 144-48]