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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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82 Within ‘t was full of jewels, of wire-work in gold; And the frightful Watcher did the treasure hold, Ready for the battle, the Old One in his lair‘T was no easy bargain for men to enter there! Upon the ness he sat him, the King in battles bred; Gold-Friend of Geatmen, while farewell he said To all his hearth- fellows. His thoughts were sad and grim, Wavering and deathward; and all too nigh to him Wyrd was there awaiting to greet that aged Heart, Aye, to seek his soul’s hoard, to sunder apart The life from the body. Not long it was before The spirit of the Aetheling was wound in flesh no more. Beowulf made his speech then, son of Ecgtheow, he: “From many a battle onset in youth I ‘scaped free, From many a while of warfare-I mind me of them all. I was seven winters, when from father’s hall That Prince-of-people took me, that Giver-of-the-Ring. He held me, he had me, Hrethel, he, the King; Fee and food he gave me, of kinship mindful, he; Never was I loathlier to him in grace and gree, While a bairn in burg I lived, than his sons, the three, Herebeald and Haethcyn, or my Hygelac. [For Herebeald, the eldest, by unmeet attack, By the deed of Kinsman, was strewn the death-bed, When Haethcyn with arrow, from horn-bow sped, Smote his own Herebeald, his Liege-Lord, dead; He missed of his mark there, and shot his Kinsman’s heart, A brother the other, with a bloody dart. That was a fight all fee-less, of sin a fearful thing, A horror unto Hrethel, and yet the Aetheling, Forever unavenged, must from life depart. It were a sight too awful for aged man to bide, To see his boy, his young boy, upon the gallows ride. Then his lay he moaneth, his sorrow-song he speaks, When his son is hanging, a joy for ravens’ beaks; And he may help him no wise, this old man forlorn. And he is reminded, each and every morn, Of his bairn gone elsewhere. Nor doth the father care To see within his burg-hall now another heir, Since the one in death-pangs had suffered evil so. Upon his son’s own bower, he looketh, worn with woe The wine- hall a waste now, where the winds sweep, Bereft now of revel. The rider is asleep, The warrior in his under-grave; there is with harp no glee, And in the courts no wassail, as there used to be.] |
