Even the old poetic tradition remains the same.

The alliterative metre of the earlier verse is still only slightly affected by riming terminations; the similes are the few natural similes of Caedmon; the battle-scenes are painted with the same rough, simple joy.
[Sidenote: English Patriotism] Instead of crushing England, indeed, the Conquest did more than any event that had gone before to build up an English people.

All local distinctions, the distinction of Saxon from Mercian, of both from Northumbrian, died away beneath the common pressure of the stranger.

The Conquest was hardly over when we see the rise of a new national feeling, of a new patriotism.

In his quiet cell at Worcester the monk Florence strives to palliate by excuses of treason or the weakness of rulers the defeats of Englishmen by the Danes.