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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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51 CHAPTER XX The Scop chants how Hrothgar then told Beowulf of the new woe in Heorot wrought by Grendel’s Mother, and of the wild regions of frosted forest and dark pool where the trollkin dwelt, and of his hope that Beowulf would be again the Mighty Helper. Hrothgar made a speech then, Helm of the Scylding-Brood: “Nay, ask not after joyance! Sorrow is renewed Unto the folk of Daneland. Dead is now another Aescher, of Yrmenlaf who was the elder brother, My councillor, my wise-man, and comrade at my right Whenever our heads we warded amidst of the fight, As clashed the foot-foemen, and rang the boar-crest A jarl should be like Aescher, an aetheling the best. Him hath the hand in Heorot of roving Death-Sprite slain, And I wot not whither its backward-ways ‘t has ta’en, In its prey exulting, of its feasting fain. She hath the feud avenged whereby on yester-night Thou slewest so grimly Grendel by gripping him so tight Because he rent and ravaged too long my folk in strife. He fell at last in battle, paying with his life; And now hath come another Scather lorn and lewd, Who would avenge her offspring-and farther bears the feud: So that indeed it seemeth unto many a thane, Who weepeth for his Ring-Giver, a hard heart-bane; Low lies the hand that wrought ye your every wish so well. I’ve heard my land-dwellers, my folk’s householders, tell They’d seen a pair of such ones, alien Sprites obscure, Mickle Border- Stalkers, haunting the moor. And of these the One was-as far as guess they mightThe likeness of a woman; the other wretched Wight Trod his tracks of exile in a man’s own mien, Save that he was bigger than man hath ever been Whom the landfolk named Grendel of yore. Knew they not the father-whether theretofore Ever he’d begotten any troll-kin more. Their haunts are secret places, the wolf-slopes dim, The headlands windy, the fen-ways grim, Where the mountain waterfall downward away Floweth under crag-head, under mists of spray. And the mere it standeth off some mile or more: Over it there hangeth a forest frosted hoar; A wood, fast-rooted, the water over-hoods; Each night is seen a wonder weird-a fire on the floods! There lives no man so wise on earth whoso its bottom sounds: |
