| |
| NOT in any wise would the earls’-defence 1 | |
| suffer that slaughterous stranger to live, | |
| useless deeming his days and years | |
| to men on earth. Now many an earl | |
| of Beowulf brandished blade ancestral, | 5 |
| fain the life of their lord to shield, | |
| their praiséd prince, if power were theirs; | |
| never they knew,—as they neared the foe, | |
| hardy-hearted heroes of war, | |
| aiming their swords on every side | 10 |
| the accursed to kill,—no keenest blade, | |
| no farest of falchions fashioned on earth, | |
| could harm or hurt that hideous fiend! | |
| He was safe, by his spells, from sword of battle, | |
| from edge of iron. Yet his end and parting | 15 |
| on that same day of this our life | |
| woful should be, and his wandering soul | |
| far off flit to the fiends’ domain. | |
| Soon he found, who in former days, | |
| harmful in heart and hated of God, | 20 |
| on many a man such murder wrought, | |
| that the frame of his body failed him now. | |
| For him the keen-souled kinsman of Hygelac | |
| held in hand; hateful alive | |
| was each to other. The outlaw dire | 25 |
| took mortal hurt; a mighty wound | |
| showed on his shoulder, and sinews cracked, | |
| and the bone-frame burst. To Beowulf now | |
| the glory was given, and Grendel thence | |
| death-sick his den in the dark moor sought, | 30 |
| noisome abode: he knew too well | |
| that here was the last of life, an end | |
| of his days on earth.—To all the Danes | |
| by that bloody battle the boon had come. | |
| From ravage had rescued the roving stranger | 35 |
| Hrothgar’s hall; the hardy and wise one | |
| had purged it anew. His night-work pleased him, | |
| his deed and its honor. To Eastern Danes | |
| had the valiant Geat his vaunt made good, | |
| all their sorrow and ills assuaged, | 40 |
| their bale of battle borne so long, | |
| and all the dole they erst endured, | |
| pain a-plenty.—’Twas proof of this, | |
| when the hardy-in-fight a hand laid down, | |
| arm and shoulder,—all, indeed, | 45 |
| of Grendel’s gripe,—’neath the gabled roof. | |
