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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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54 It was a thing of sorrow, a burden of heart’s pain, Aye, to many a clansman a grief it was and dread, When, upon the sea-cliff, they met with Aescher’s head! The flood with blood was boiling, yes, with the hot gore; The folk saw down upon it; the horn was singing o’er Its battle-blast of onset. The band all sate; They watched along the water the sea- worms great, Monsters of the dragon-breed, trying there the sea, And on the foreland ledges Nicors lying free (Who’re wont at early morning their grievous quest to take Out upon the sail-road)- and wild-beast and snake. Bitter and puffed with anger, they hastened away They had heard that clangor, the war-horn’s lay. One did the Geatish Leader with arrow-bow from shore Berob of life forever and of the waves’ uproar. The warrior-shaft, the hardy, unto his heart went home He whom death had taken swam more sluggish on the foam! Speedily on the billows with barbed boar-spears They pressed him so sorely, they harried him so fierce, And dragged him up the ledges, this wave-tossing Ranger. The marvelling warriors looked upon the grim and grisly Stranger. Girded himself, did Beowulf, with his jarlman’s weeds; Naught for his life he mourned. His coat of mail must needs, Bright with deft devices, be trying the sea-quest This hand-woven byrnie big, that girt his bony-chest, So never a grip-in-battle might do his bosom scath, Nor life be hurt by vengeful grasp of this Thing-of- Wrath. The head of him was guarded by the helmet white That soon must seek the sounding surge and stir the deeps below: With lordly bands ‘t was bounden, with treasure-work ‘t was dight, As the weapon-smith had wrought it in days of long ago, And wondrously had decked it and set with shapes of boar, That brand nor blade of battle might bite it nevermore. Nor was that the smallest of helps to mighty deed Which Spokesman of Hrothgar had loaned him in his need: A good sword hafted, and Hrunting its name, Of all old heirlooms the first it was in fame. The edge of it was iron, etched with twig and spray, Hardened by the battle-blood; ne’er did it betray Any man that clasped it with hand amid the fray,Any man that dared to go on war-paths away, To folk-stead of foemen. Nor this the first time now That Hrunting- sword of Unferth in mighty works should dow. In sooth the bairn of Ecglaf, great though his prowess be, Remembered not his speech of late when drunk with wine was he, Now as he lent his weapon to a stouter swordsman here. |
