In 2008, my literature class read an excellent Anglo-Saxon poem called "The Dream of the Rood." Soon afterwards, I wrote a poem on it which I liked because of its themes and imagery, but it didn't sound very good, and what good is a poem that sounds bad? So I reworked it recently and this is the result. It still has a somewhat choppy feel between lines, but I fixed some of the rhythm and added rhyme. I also expanded the images and added new ones, making it one of my denser poems as far as layers of meaning go, but in the process it has diverged somewhat from the themes of the Old English original. Anyway, here it is.
Summary of "The Dream of the Rood" 6/10
Behold the tree which brightly stands above the ones around
While casting down its shining leaves and garlands on the ground.
Its branching limbs reach far and wide to spread the joy it's found.
And every day it seeks to grow, it seeks to praise the Lord.
Behold the tree, now chopped and stripped of all its purple bark,
For men have rudely hewn it down by capture in the dark.
Far greater than its murderers, a contrast strange and stark,
For safety was not garden-grown; how can it praise the Lord?
Behold the tree, a man is raised upon its aching back.
Though sliced and bruised, it holds him up and gives the all it lacks.
The tree cries out! It can't refrain from murder cruel and black.
The angels weep to see the deaths, no more to praise the Lord.
Behold the tree, now glorified, a victor after death,
No ghost of hell could hold it down or keep it in the depth,
Its glory shown, not in the spring, but Jesus' final breath,
A symbol-tree for all to see, it now can praise the Lord.
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