World Enough and Time

A little research this morning, before rushing off to work.

In "Quotes of the Day" today there was this passage from H. Rider Haggard:

Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. - H. Rider Haggard, 1856 - 1925

Very familiar, and not from H. Rider Haggard - not that I haven't read him and probably that passage, too; but it rang bells as being from Anglo-Saxon literature, something Haggard was citing or translating or paraphrasing. So I had to find out where. It turns out to be from the Venerable Bede, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England, chapter XIII, when the English are debating whether to become Christian in the time of Bishop Paulinus:

Another of the king's chief men, approving of his wise words and exhortations, added thereafter: "The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. If, therefore, this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed."

The King, of course, is Edwin of the Northumbrians. I always loved that metaphor. But then... I love so much of the Venerable Bede. This reminds me that I was re-reading Bede a few months ago, and stopped. Must get back to it. Obviously I hadn't got as far as that scene.

Whew. Finding it makes me feel better. Now I can go to work happy.