Note 131 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
In Wright’s “Biographia Literaria,” Anglo-Saxon Period, p. 502, seq., these three Runic passages are collected and translated. In Bosworth’s “Anglo-Saxon Dictionary,” ed. Toller, v. Cynewulf; the Runic passage is quoted from the Elene, and translated. This poet’s Runic device affects us somewhat as when, at the end of a volume of Coleridge’s poems, we come upon his epitaph, written by himself:—
“Stop, Christian passer-by!—Stop, child of God! And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod A poet lies, or that which once seem’d he— Oh, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.!”