The Oldest English Epic/Chapter 1/Beowulf 12
XII
Not in any wise would the earls’-defence[1]
suffer that slaughterous stranger to live,
useless[2] deeming his days and years
to men on earth. Now many an earl
795of Beowulf brandished blade ancestral,
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,
800aiming their swords on every side
the accursed to kill,—no keenest blade,
no fairest of falchions fashioned on earth,
could harm or hurt that hideous fiend!
He was safe,[3] by his spells, from sword of battle,
805from edge of iron. Yet his end and parting
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,
810harmful in heart and hated of God,
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
815was each to other. The outlaw dire
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
820death-sick his den in the dark moor sought,
noisome abode:[4] 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.
825From ravage had rescued the roving stranger
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,
830all their sorrow and ills assuaged,
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[5] laid down,
835arm and shoulder,—all, indeed,
of Grendel’s gripe,[6]—’neath the gabled roof.
- ↑ Kenning for Beowulf.
- ↑ Litotes for “dangerous,” “destructive.”
- ↑ Also his mother, against whom Beowulf’s sword is wielded in vain; below, v. 1522.
- ↑ Schücking, Beowulf’s Rückkehr, p. 10, notes the resemblance of this flght to the struggles between a saint and the devil or devils, as, for example, in Juliana, vv. 288, 554 ff., and St. Dunstan’s affair with Satan.
- ↑ Hadding, in the forest by night sheltered by a rude tent of twigs, sees “a hand of extraordinary size” wandering about. His nurse, a giantess, holds the hand while Hadding hews it oft, and “corrupt matter” flows from it. Tearing and rending with their claws is the giants’ way. See Saxo, Bk. I (Holder, p. 23), and Elton’s translation.
- ↑ That is, all Grendel’s machinery of grasp, both clutch and reach. The translation “fist” will not do. The concluding nine lines of this section are compared by ten Brink with the last stanza of Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.