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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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49 CHAPTER XIX The Scop chants how Grendel’s Mother came that night to the Gold-Hall Heorot, and bare off a Danishmen and the paw of her dead son Grendel, and how on the morrow King Hrothgar grieved anew, just as Beowulf, who knew not what had passed, had wended to the King’s House to wish Hrothgar a courteous good morning. Sank they to sleep then; was one who purchased sore His rest there of evening-as oft had chanced before, Ever since this Grendel made Gold-Hall his home, And wrought there at wrong deeds till his end did come His death after sinnings. And now ‘t was seen by men, And far and wide reported, that an Avenger then Yet survived the Monster,- that all the time Another Survived this battle-sorrow: Grendel’s own Mother, The She-Thing, the Witch- Wife, her pang was mourning near, She who needs must make her home in grisly mere, In the cold sea-currents-after the times when Cain An only brother, his father’s son, with the sword had slain. Outlaw, marked for murder, he fled the joys of folk, Haunted the wildernesses. So from him awoke The breed of fated goblins; of these was Grendel kin, That Horror, that Outcast-who Heorot Hall within Had found that watchful Human, awaiting the fight. There the Ogre gripped him, but of his strength of might Beowulf was mindful-to him God’s precious gift And trusted the Almighty for grace and cheer and shift. Thereby he overcame the Foe; this Troll of Hell he strook, Who slunk off acringing, of his joys forsook, For to see his death-place- this Foe of mankind. And now his greedy, gloomy Mother was of mind To go on quest of sorrow, to wreak the death of her son. She came then to Heorot, where around the floor The Ring-Danes were sleeping. Then came to jarls anon Return of olden evils, when athrough the door Burst the Mother of Grendel! But this was a terror less, Less by as much as less is a woman’s war-prowess, The battling might of maidens, than a man in fighting dress (Whenever his falchion, banded, anvil-beat by the sledge, His sword with blood bestained, cleaves with its doughty edge Down through the foeman’s boar-crest, over the helmet’s crown. Then in the hall of Hrothgar, many a blade was drawn, Swords from over the benches; many a buckler tall Was lifted tight in the hand there! Never a man in hall Thought of his helm or corslet-on whom that fear did fall. |
