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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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77 CHAPTER XXXII The Scop is now well started on the story of the Dragon. He tells us some curious history: how it was a nameless slave, fleeing the wrath of his master (also nameless), who had entered by chance and discovered the Hoard; and how, many, years before that luckless day some nobleman, the last of his race, had hidden all that treasure there, and made a melancholy speech thereby. The Scop goes on then to chant the wrath of the Dragon, who waited, like Grendel, for the night, before making his attack on human kind. But not of own accord there, not of his own will, Brake he the Serpent’s Hoard there, who did the Drake such ill; But he, a slave of some one of human fellowship, Seeking forlorn for cover, fled his master’s whip, And into the cave he entered, a man by guilt oppressed. Anon he gazed with terror, he, the stranger guest; Yet, even amid the horror, he, the wretched wight, Espied the jewelled goblet. Was plain, besides, to sight Many a treasure olden in that house-of- earth, Precious heirlooms golden of kinsmen of high birth, Which some jarl or other, in the days of yore, Taking thought, had hidden there forevermore. All his kin aforetime death away had taken, And he alone of warrior-host lingering there forsaken, A watcher, friends bewailing, weened like theirs his doom,That soon he too must leave each glad heirloom. Ready to hand a barrow new lay by ness and moor, Hard-by the sea-waves, secret and secure. The Warden-of-Rings did thither the jarl-treasure bear, Of plated gold a goodly deal, worth the hiding there. Quoth he then in few words: “Earth, now hold, Now that warriors can not, the jarlmen’s goldLo, from thee did brave men get it all of old. Battle-death hath taken, body-bale hath slain Every sturdy fighter, each folk-thane, Of all who saw the joy in hall-ne’er to see again. None have I who’ll wield the sword, none who’ll burnish fair The golden-plated tankard, the drink-stoup rare: All the valiant noblemen are gone... else ... where. From helmet hard, with gold dight, the platings shall depart; The burnishers are sleeping who should prepare with art The casques for every onset. E’en so the army-coat, That braved amid the battle bite of steel on throat Over the clashing bucklers, shall crumble with its bearer; Yea, the ringed byrnie, shall with its warrior- wearer |
