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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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32 CHAPTER XI The Scop strikes louder notes upon his harp and he chants with so much fire that we in our banquet hall keep our hands fixed in the handles of our tankards and forget to drink. For he tells how Grendel burst the door of Heorot, greedy for man-flesh and unwitting the welcome he would get, and how Grendel up a sleeping Geat, and how, to his eternal sorrow, he then laid paws upon Beowulf. Fierce indeed was that wrestling, and it was a wonder that Heorot, so battered and shaken, did not tumble down on the heads of all. And the Danes, who were waiting yonder on the wall of the Burg, heard the night-shrieks of Grendel in the grip of the Strong One. And now from out the moorland, under the misty slopes, Came astalking Grendel-God’s anger on his hopes. That Scather foul was minded to snare of human kin Some one, or sundry, that high hall within. Under the welkin strode he, until full well he spied The wine- house, the gold-hall, with fret-work glittering wide. Nor was that the first time Hrothgar’s home he sought. Yet never in his life-days, late or early, aught Like this harsh welcome found he from thanemen in the hall. He came afooting onward to the house withal, This warring One that ever had been from bliss out-cast; Forthwith the door sprang open, with forged-bolts though fast, When with his paws he pressed it; yea, then, on bale-work bent, Swoln as he was with fury, that house’s mouth he rent. Anon the Fiend was treading the shining floor in there; On he moved in anger; from eyes of him did glare, Unto fire likest, a light unfair. He saw within the chamber many a man asleep, Kinsman band together, of clanfolk a heap; Laughed his mood, was minded that Hobgoblin grim, Ere the dawn to sunder each his life from limb, Now that fill-of-feeding he weened awaited him! But Wyrd it was that would not longer grant him might To seize on more of mankind after that same night. Was watching he, the stalwart Kin of Hygelac, How with grip the Grisly would go at his attack. He had no thought, this Goblin, that business to put off; But pounced upon a sleeping man, starting quick enough! Unthwartedly he slit him, bit his bone-box, drunk From his veins the blood of him, gulped him chunk by chunk, Till soon, then, he |
