[Brooke was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, poet, critic, and educator whose Primer of English Literature (1876) was popular with generations of students. In the excerpt below, he contends that Cynewulf, who is often credited as the author of The Dream of the Rood, wrote the epic poem as "his farewell to earth."]

TheDream of the Rood is in the Vercelli Book. There is great discussion concerning its authorship. A large number of critics allot it to Cynewulf, but they lessen the weight of their opinion by giving other poems to Cynewulf which have nothing in them of the artist. Ten Brink and Zupitza both maintained against Wülker the authorship of Cynewulf. No assertion can be made at present on the subject. It is a matter of probabilities.

I not only think it probable that Cynewulf wrote it, but I believe it to be his last poem, his farewell to earth. It seems indeed to be the dirge, as it were, of all Northumbrian poetry. But I do not believe that the whole of the poem was original, but worked up by Cynewulf from that early lay of the Rood, a portion of which we find in the runic verses on the Ruthwell Cross. That poem was written in the "long epic line" used by the Cædmonian school, and I think that when in our Dream of the Rood this long line occurs, it belongs to1 or isaltered from the original lay. The portions by Cynewulf are written in the short epic line, his use of which is almost invariable in the Elene.

What he did, then, was probably this. Having had a dream of the Cross in his early life which converted him and to which he refers in the Elene, he wished to record it fully before he died. But he found a poem already existing, and well known, which in his time was attributed by some to Cædmon, and which described the ascent of Christ upon the Cross, His death and burial. He took this poem and worked it up into a description of the vision in which the Cross appeared to him. Then he wrote to this a beginning and an end of his own, and in the short metre he now used.

This theory, whatever its worth may be, accounts for the double metre of the poem, does away with the strongest argument—that derived from metre—against Cynewulf's authorship, explains the difficulty of the want of unity of feeling which exists between the dream-part and the conclusion, and leaves to Cynewulf a number of passages which are steeped in his peculiar personality, which it would be hazardous to allot to any one but himself.

The introduction is quite in his manner, with the exception of two long lines. The personal cry—"I, stained with sins, wounded with my guilt," is almost a quotation from his phrases in the Juliana and Elene. The impersonation of the tree, the account of its life in the wood, is like the beginning and the manner of some of the Riddles. The subjective, personal element, so strong in his signed poems, is stronger in his parts of this poem. It would naturally be so if the poem were written, when he was very near to death, as his retrospect and his farewell. It isequally natural, if this view of the date of the poem be true, that he would enshrine at the last, by means of his art, the story of the most important hour of his life, and leave it as a legacy to the friends of whom he speaks so tenderly. "Lo," it begins—

Listen, of all dreams, I'll the dearest tell,
That at mid of night, met me (while I slept),
When word-speaking wights, resting, wonned in
 sleep.
To the sky up-soaring, then I saw, methought,
All enwreathed with light, wonderful, a Tree;
Brightest it of beams! All that beacon was
Over-gushed with gold; jewels were in it,
At its foot were fair; five were also there
High upon the shoulder-span, and beheld it
  there, all the angels of the Lord
Winsome for the world to come! Surely that was
 not, of a wicked man the gallows.

These two last lines may belong to the original poem, which Cynewulf was working on. Now he goes on himself:—

But the spirits of the saints saw it (shining) there,
And the men who walk the mould, and this
  mighty universe!
Strange that stem of Victory! Then I, spotted
  o'er with sins,
Wounded with my woeful guilt, saw the Wood
 of glory,
All with joys a-shining, all adorned with weeds,
Gyred with gold around! And the gems had gloriously
Wandered in a wreath round this woodland tree.

Nathless could I, through the gold, come to understand
How these sufferers strove of old—when it first
 began
Blood to sweat on its right side. I was all with
  sorrows vexed,
Fearful, 'fore that vision fair, for I saw that fleet
  fire-beacon
Change in clothing and in colour! Now beclouded '  twas with wet,

Now with running blood 'twas moist, then again
 enriched with gems.
Long the time I lay, lying where I was,
Looking, heavy hearted, on the Healer's Tree—
Till at last I heard how it loudly cried!
These the words the best of woods now began to
  speak—
"Long ago it was, yet I ever think of it,
How that I was hewèd down where the holt had
 end!
From my stock I was dissevered; strong the foes
  that seized me there;
Made of me a mocking-stage, bade me lift their
 men outlawed,
So the men on shoulders moved me, till upon a
  mount they set me."

These lines seem to me partly Cynewulf 's and partly of the old poem. He has introduced personal modifications to fit them into his dream. Now, he scarcely touches the old work: and the lines run on to a length which contrasts strangely with those of theconclusion to the dream itself:—

"Many were the foemen who did fix me there!
 Then I saw the Lord, Lord of folk-kin he,
Hastening, march with mickle power, since he
 would up-mount on me."

"But I—I dared not, against my Lord's word, bow myself or burst asunder, though I saw all regions of earth trembling; I might have felled His foes, but I stood fast:—

Then the Hero young, armed himself for war,—
 and Almighty God he was;
Strong and staid of mood stepped he on the gallows
  high,
Brave of soul in sight of many, for he would set
  free mankind.
Then I shivered there—when the Champion
  clipped me round;
But I dared not, then, cringe me to the earth.

A Rood was I upreared, rich was the King I lifted up; Lord of all the heavens was he, therefore I dared not fall. With dark nails they pierced me through and through; on me the dagger-strokes are seen; wounds are they of wickedness. Yet I dared not do them scathe; they reviled us both together. Drenched with blood was I, drenched from head to foot—blood poured from the Hero's side when he had given up the ghost. A host of wrathful weirds I bore upon that mount.I saw the Lord of peoples serve a cruel service; thick darkness had enwrapt in clouds the corse of the King. Shadow, wan under the welkin, pressed down the clear shining of the sun. All creation wept, mourned the fall of the King: Christ was on the Rood. I beheld it all, I, crushed with sorrow.… Then they took Almighty God: from that sore pain they lifted him; but the warriors left me there streaming with blood; all wounded with shafts was I:—

So they laid him down, limb-wearied; stood beside   the head of his lifeless corse.
Then they looked upon him, him the Lord of
  Heaven, and he rested there for a little time.
Sorely weary he, when the mickle strife was
  done! Then before his Banes, in the sight of
  them,
Did the men begin, here to make a grave for him.
  And they carved it there of a glittering stone,
Laid him low therein, him the Lord of victory.
  Over him the poor folk sang a lay of sorrow
On that eventide!

And there he rested with a little company." Here the old work ends, and Cynewulf, touching in what he had learnt from the Legend of Helena and the Cross, is told by the Rood to tell his dream to men, to warn them of judgment to come, and to bear, if they would be safe, the Cross in their hearts.

Now the Rood ceases to speak, and Cynewulf 's personal conclusion follows. Its first lines are retrospective. They tell how he felt in early manhood, immediately after the dream which was the cause of his conversion. He felt "blithe of mood," because he was forgiven, "passionate in prayer, eager for death"—a common mixture of feelings in the hearts of men in the first hours of their new life with God. "Then, pleased in my heart, I prayed to the Tree with great eagerness, there, where I was, with a small company, and my spirit was passionate for departure." But he did not die, forced to out-live many sorrows—"Far too much I endured in long and weary days." Then heturns from the past tothe present—"Now I have hope of life to come, since I have a will towards the Tree of Victory. There is my refuge." Then he remembers all the friends who have gone before him, and sings his death-song, waiting in joy and hope to meet those he loved at the evening meal in Heaven. "Few are left me now," he says, "of the men in power I knew":—

Few of friends on earth; they have fared from
  hence,
Far away from worldly joys, wended to the Lord
  of Glory!
Now in Heaven they live, near to their High Father,
In their brightness now abiding! But I bide me
  here,
Living on from day to day, till my Lord His
  Rood,
Which I erst had looked upon, long ago on
 earth,
From this fleeting life of ours fetch my soul
  away—
And shall bring me there, where the bliss is
 mickle,
Happiness in Heaven! There the High God's folk
At the evening meal are set; there is everlasting
 joy!

At last, with a happy reversion to that earlier theme he loved—the deliverance of the Old Testament saints from Hades—he turns from himself, now going home, to the triumphant homecoming of Jesus; soaring, as his custom was, into exultant verse:

                Hope was then renewed,
With fresh blossoming and bliss, in the souls
 who'd borne the fire!
Strong the Son with conquest was, on that (soaring)
  path,
Mighty and majestical, when with multitudes he
 came,
With the host of holy spirits, to the Home of
 God—
And to all the Holy Ones, who in Heaven long
 before
Glory had inhabited—So the Omnipotent came
 home,
Where his lawful heirship lay, God, the Lord of
 all.

This is the close of the Dream of the Rood and the closing song of the life and work of Cynewulf. We see him pass away, after all storms and sorrows, into peace.

The most vigorous part of the poem is the old work, but its reworking by Cynewulf has broken it up so much that its simplicity is hurt. The image of the towering Tree, now blazing like a Rood at Hexham or Ripon with jewels, now veiled in a crimson mist and streaming with blood, is conceived with power; but, as imaginative work, it is not to be compared with the image of the mighty Rood in the Crist which, soaring from Zion to the skies, illuminates with its crimson glow heaven and earth, the angels and the host of mankind summoned to judgment. The invention of the Tree bringing its soul from the far-off wood, alive and suffering with every pang of the great Sufferer, shivering when Christ, the young Hero, clasped it round, longing to crush His foes, weeping when He is taken from it, joining in the wail of burial, conscious that on it, as on a field of battle, death and hell were conquered, is full of that heroic strain with which Cynewulf sympathised, and the subject was his own. It was he, more than any other English poet, who conceived and celebrated Christ as the Saviour of men, as the Hero of the New Testament.