The object of this study is the stability of the stylistic conventions of Old English poetry. As is indicated by the continuities between continental Germanic and Anglo-Saxon vernacular verse, the form and style of Old English poetry took shape before the movement of Germanic speaking peoples to Britain. It continued to be used up to and beyond the death of Edward the Confessor: that is, it lasted for well over six hundred years. We tend to overlook the significance of this stability when we think ahistorically of a single Anglo-Saxon period extending from the fifth to the eleventh century. The distorting effect of the periodization of Anglo-Saxon history, however, becomes more obvious when we consider that a similar time span in the history of the area of Gaul which was to become modern France is divided up into five different periods: Late Antiquity, Merovingian, Carolingian, post-Carolingian and Capetian. These five periods indicate much more fully the major social, political, economic and cultural changes which took place in the early medieval period throughout Europe, than does the notion of Anglo-Saxon England. Over the course of this long Anglo-Saxon period, Old English poetry both adapted to and assimilated the conversion to Christianity, the introduction of writing, and the emergence of a united English kingdom, whilst simultaneously maintaining its traditional style. A continental comparison is again illuminating.