[Text used: Kluge, _Angelsaechsisches Lesebuch_.
This poem was attributed to Bede, who died in 735, by his pupil,
Cuthbert, who translated it into Latin. The Northumbrian version is in a
manuscript at St. Gall.
These verses are examples of gnomic poetry, which was very popular in Old
English literature. Miss Williams, in her _Gnomic Poetry in Anglo-Saxon_
(Columbia University Press, 1914), p. 67, says that this is the earliest
gnomic expression in Old English for which a definite date may be set.
Text criticism: Charlotte D'Evelyn, "Bede's Death Song," _Modern Language
Notes_, xxx, 31.]
Before leaving this life there lives no one
Of men of wisdom who will not need
To consider and judge, ere he sets on his journey,
What his soul shall be granted of good or evil--
5 After his day of death what doom he shall meet.
1. Bede, the author of the _Ecclesiastical History of England_, was the
greatest figure in the English church of the seventh and eighth
centuries.