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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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14 And the mournful tidings to courts and kingdoms wide In gleemen’s ballads travelled, how Grendel’s hate defied Hrothgar forever, how for many a year Grendel waged his warfare, strife of ceaseless fear; Would not, by a peace-pact, set the Danemen free, Would not with the Aethelings e’er compound for fee. And still less might any of the Wise-men wot, ‘Gainst those paws of pillage, help for Hrothgar’s lot. The grisly Wretch kept reaving youth and age of breath; He lurked, he lured them darkly, that skulking Shade of Death; Made, through nights eternal, misty moors his home; Though beyond man’s ken the haunts, where Hell’s wizards roam. Such a tale of terrors, such heap of hard despite Wrought this Foe of mankind, Stalker lone by night. Heorot Hall, the gold-bright, was his dusky den. (Yet not his the power-God forbade him then! E’er to greet the gift-stool, e’er to come anear Throne itself of Hrothgar, nor partake its cheer.) And so soul of Hrothgar, Scylding good and great, Long was wracked and broken. And chiefs together sate Oft at rede, devising, what to do were best, For such stout-hearted clansmen, against such awful guest. Whiles at their idol-temples they vowed their offerings fair, And conjured the Soul-Destroyer, for help in folk-despair. Such was their devil-practice, and hope of these heathen men, ‘Twas Hell in their hearts they remembered; and God was not in their ken. The Doomsman of Deeds, they wist not; wist not the Lord of Love; Nor worshipped the Wielder-of-Wonders, the Helm of the Heavens above. Woe to the soul that perversely shall fling to the fiery pit, Never to ween of comfort, never to change a whit; Weal to the soul that after the day of his death is come May seek the Lord and crave there in arms of the Father a home. CHAPTER III Off in Geatland, across the narrow seas in Southern Scandinavia, Beowulf, the Kinsman of Hygelac, King of the Geats, heard through mariners, or through wandering gleemen singing of Cannibal Grendel and Heorot the Desolate, how terrible was Hrothgar’s need and distress; and he sailed forth with a chosen band of fourteen stalwart young braves to render Hrothgar the help of his great strength. For, as everybody knew who listened to the Scop in those days, Beowulf was the strongest man that ever |
