Page:The Elene of Cynewulf.djvu/41

 heavens. I dare not despise this cross with scoffing laugh. Lo! the Saviour hath again shut me into my narrow home, smitten with woe. Once I was filled with joy by a Judas: but now, again by a Judas, am I humbled, bereft of possessions, abhorred, and friendless. But I know how to discover again by my sin a way of return hereafter from the home of the damned. I shall incite against thee another king who shall persecute thee, and shall forsake thy teaching and follow my ways of evil; then will he cast thee into the darkest and worst of terrors, that thou, racked with pain, mayst vehemently renounce the crucified King, whom thou didst formerly obey.’

Then the wise Judas, daring hero in strife, answered him (the Holy Spirit was granted unto him with strength, a love hot as fire, a knowledge welling up through the learning of a warrior); and he spake this word, filled with wisdom:—‘Thou needst not so mightily, ever mindful of evil, renew sorrow and enkindle strife, O sinful prince of murder, inasmuch as the mighty King, who hath awakened with His word many of the dead, doth thrust thee into the nether depths, thou worker of iniquity, into the abyss of torture, bereft of joy. Know thou full clearly that thou in folly didst forsake the brightest of lights and the love of the Lord and that glorious faith, and that thou hast since dwelt in a bath of fire, burdened with tortures and seared with flame, and that there, with hatred in thy soul, thou shalt ever suffer woe and misery without end.’

Elene heard how the foe and the friend struggled together, the glorious and the foul on opposite sides, the sinful and the blessed. And she was the gladder