losing his life; but that liegeman flies
living away, for the land he kens.
And thus be broken on both their sides
oaths of the earls, when Ingeld’s breast
2065wells with war-hate, and wife-love now
after the care-billows cooler grows.
“So[1] I hold not high the Heathobards’ faith
due to the Danes, or their during love
and pact of peace.—But I pass from that,
2070turning to Grendel, O giver-of-treasure,
and saying in full how the fight resulted,
hand-fray of heroes. When heaven’s jewel
had fled o’er far fields, that fierce sprite came,
night-foe savage, to seek us out
2075where safe and sound we sentried the hall.
To Hondscio then was that harassing deadly,
his fall there was fated. He first was slain,
girded warrior. Grendel on him
turned murderous mouth, on our mighty kinsman,
2080and all of the brave man’s body devoured.
Yet none the earlier, empty-handed,
would the bloody-toothed murderer, mindful of bale,
outward go from the gold-decked hall:
but me he attacked in his terror of might,
- ↑ Beowulf returns to his forecast. Things might well go somewhat as follows, he says; sketches a little tragic story; and with this prophecy by illustration returns to the tale of his adventure. One will hardly agree with Müllenhoff that such a use by the poet of an old legend shows mere helpless imbecility of interpolation. In many other cases, say Gray’s Bard, the close of Dickens’s Tale of two Cities, Thomas of Ercaldoune,—to mention some very incongruous instances,—one praises the good art or artifice of narrative.
- ↑ Not an actual glove, but a sort of bag. The line could run—
. . . with savage hand seized me. A sack hung by him . . .
