From the end of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, here is an immense mourning for a person and a civilization, the sound of all of society at war: The Geat people built a pyre for Beowulf, stacked and decked it until it stood four-square, hung with helmets, heavy war-shields and shining armour, just as he had ordered. Then his warriors […]
A brother of the monastery is found to possess God’s gift of poetry [A. D. 680] In this monastery of Streanaeshalch lived a brother singularly gifted by God’s grace. So skilful was he in composing religious and devotional songs that, when any passage of Scripture was explained by interpreters, he could quickly turn it into delightful and moving poetry in […]
Then from the moor under misty hillsides, Grendel came gliding girt with God’s anger. The man-scather sought someone to snatch from the high hall. He crept under clouds until the caught sight of the king’s court whose gilded gables he knew at a glance. He often had haunted Hrothgar’s […]
