The Dream of the Rood is a dream-vision in which the cross tells the story of the crucifixion. Here Christ appears as a young hero-king, confident of victory as he rushes to mount the cross. By contrast, the cross itself (now stained with blood, now encrusted with gems in the manner of a reliquary) feels all the agony of crucifixion, and its physical pain is more than matched by the pain of its being forced to kill its young lord.

The text is from the tenth-century Vercelli Book; a portion of it is also carved in runes on an eighth-century stone cross in Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire. The earliness of the Ruthwell Cross guarantees the earliness of the poem, or at least the part of it that recounts the crucifixion (ll. 1-78).

For the poems of the Vercelli Book, see George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (New York, 1931-1953), vol. 2. Both the Vercelli and the Ruthwell texts have been edited separately, with full notes and glossary, by Michael Swanton, The Dream of the Rood, 2nd ed. (Exeter, 1987).