Beowulf
Chapter 39: Page 2
Original Text | Modern Text |
|
So he told his sorrowful tidings,
and little he lied, the loyal man
of word or of work. The warriors rose;
sad, they climbed to the Cliff-of-Eagles,
went, welling with tears, the wonder to view.
Found on the sand there, stretched at rest,
their lifeless lord, who had lavished rings
of old upon them. Ending-day
had dawned on the doughty-one; death had seized
in woful slaughter the Weders’ king.
There saw they, besides, the strangest being,
loathsome, lying their leader near,
prone on the field. The fiery dragon,
fearful fiend, with flame was scorched.
Reckoned by feet, it was fifty measures
in length as it lay. Aloft erewhile
it had revelled by night, and anon come back,
seeking its den; now in death’s sure clutch
it had come to the end of its earth-hall joys.
By it there stood the stoups and jars;
dishes lay there, and dear-decked swords
eaten with rust, as, on earth’s lap resting,
a thousand winters they waited there.
For all that heritage huge, that gold
of bygone men, was bound by a spell,
so the treasure-hall could be touched by none
of human kind,—save that Heaven’s King,
God himself, might give whom he would,
Helper of Heroes, the hoard to open,—
even such a man as seemed to him meet.
| The warriors heard this sad news and went to the cliff to see the horrible sight. They saw their leader’s body stretched out, cold and dead. Near it, they saw the horrible dragon, which they measured at fifty feet. It had soared through the night once, but its journeys were over now. Next to the dragon’s body was a pile of old and decaying plates, cups, and swords. The golden treasure was under a spell that prevented any man from entering the innermost part of the dragon’s lair. |
