of exile, though huger than human bulk.
Grendel in days long gone they named him,
1355folk of the land; his father they knew not,
nor any brood that was born to him
of treacherous spirits. Untrod is their home;[1]
by wolf-cliffs haunt they and windy headlands,
fenways fearful, where flows the stream
1360from mountains gliding to gloom of the rocks,
- ↑ R. Morris pointed out what seems an imitation of this passage in the Blickling Homilies.
- ↑ Compare Kubla Khan:—
“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.”It is worth while to compare with this passage another deliberate nature-description in Anglo-Saxon verse, and its Latin model as well. One sees how it is modified, enlarged, and really improved. It is the opening of a little poem on Doomsday paraphrased from Latin verses attributed to Beda,—and also to Alcuin.
Alone I sat in the shade of a grove,
in the deeps of the holt, bedecked with shadows,
there where the waterbrooks wavered and ran
in the midst of the place,—so I make my song,—
and winsome blooms there waxed and blossomed,
all massed amid a meadow peerless.
And the trees of the forest trembled and murmured
for a horror of winds, and the welkin was stirred,
and my heavy heart was harassed amain.
Then I suddenly, sad and fearful,
set me to sing this sorrowful verse. . . .This represents five lines of Latin:—
Inter fiorigeras fecundi cespitis herbas,
flamine ventorum resonantibus undique ramis,
arboris umbriferae maestus sub tegmine solus
dum sedi, subito planctu turbatus amaro,
carmina prae tristi cecini haec lugubria mente. . . .It is no long stride hence to the conventional dream-poets, and such openings as are offered by the beginning of the Piers Plowman vision.
