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,[1] 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:[2] 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
- ↑ 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.
