The substance of this ancient epic is a mingling of history, folk-lore, and myth, and to determine the exact limits of each is impossible. There was a real King Hygelac, and most probably a real hero Beowulf. The battles with the monsters are Interpretation of the Poem variously interpreted. They may be the stories of famous fights with wild beasts; or they may represent the conflict of man with the forces of nature; or they may even be a part of the nature myth of the conflict between night and day, light and darkness, summer and winter. But this kind of interpretation may easily be pushed too far. A primitive people, like children, love a good story and are not troubled by things too strange to be believed. Heroic The chief interest of the poem is in its pictures of old Teutonic life, the customs of the people, the relations between the king and his thanes, their love of adventure and fighting, their delight in the mead cup and the gleeman's song. More than this, the poem is an expression of the ideals of a heroic age. Beowulf is the ideal hero and king, strong, brave, chivalrous, generous, and devoted to his people. A lofty morality pervades the poem; Beowulf was a man who never swore a false oath." Women are respected. Bravery is a virtue; fear of death is a disgrace. Warriors are true to their chiefs. "Death is better for every earl than a life of dishonor," says Wiglaf to the cowardly earls who deserted Beowulf in his fight with the dragon. 66 Peculiarly attractive are the vivid descriptions of wild nature and the life of the sea. The detailed picture of the merewoman's pool, overhung with "rime-covered thickets" and Earliest "shadowed by a fast-rooted wood," is justly celebrated as the earliest piece of nature poetry in our literature. The poem, like all early Anglo-Saxon poetry, is saturated with sea-mists. The poet dwells upon every aspect of the ocean with loving fidelity and never tires of inventing new epithets to describe it. It is the "whale-road," the "swan-road," the "sea-path," and the ship is the "wave-farer" and the "wave-steed." A fine picture of these old sea-rovers in their high-prowed skiffs is contained in a single line:— The foamy-necked boat glides like a bird. But the bright aspects of sea life are not so prominent as its terrors and gloom. We hear the melancholy moaning of the waves, the angry lashings of the storm, premonitions of sudden Teutonic death. Weird, the Teutonic embodiment of fate or destiny, casts a shadow over every action, giving to it a stern aspect. Beowulf, in his last fight, cries: "To us it shall be as our weird betides, that weird that is every man's lord." Nature gave to the voice of the scop a tone of sadness. Hamlet, the melancholy Dane, is a descendant of these rude philosophers, viewing with primitive perplexity the mysteries of life and death. Although the imaginative power of Beowulf is not great, its descriptions are full of truth and vigor, the narrative is spirited, the touch of pathetic tenderness at the close is finely conceived, and throughout a heroic spirit gives dignity to the poem. "The poem is great in its own way," says Stopford Brooke, "and the way is an English way. The men, the women, at home and in war, are one in character with us. It is our Genesis, the book of our origins." Anglo-Saxon Anglo-Saxon genius generally expressed itself in epic form, but it has also given us several short poems possessing lyrical quality. These crude lyrics are of the elegiac type, expressing the melancholy that seems to have been absorbed into the blood of the Teuton from the cold fogs of the North Sea. The Wanderer describes the sorrows of one who has lost his lord and in "heaviness of heart" wanders far over the frost-bound waves, searching sorrowsmitten" for the comfort of some new "giver of rings." When "sleep and sorrow sit together" upon him, he dreams of the happy days with his master, but he awakes to find only the desolate sea clouded with falling sleet and snow. Then "the wounds of the heart are made still sorer. Ever new is pain!" The Seafarer is a vivid expression of the fascination of the sea, which, from the remote and nameless author of this poem down to Tennyson and Swinburne, has been one of the most inspiring themes used by English poets. The In spite of many hardships, the old seafarer is drawn by an irresistible impulse to the wild life of the rolling waves. Like Tennyson's "Ulysses," he is driven by the desire in his heart to wander, "to seek the home of the stranger in lands afar off." Not the rich gifts of his lord, nor the harp in the mead-hall, nor the wife of his home, nor anything whatsoever can give him delight, "save the tossing of the waves," O forever he has longing, who is lured by the sea. In The Ruin there is an expression of regret for the vanished splendor of some Roman city in Britain, most likely Bath. In a spirit of gentle sadness the poet contemplates the crumbling walls, where once was "the joyous revelry of men,' The Ruin the gathering of proud warriors "all gloriously adorned," now "departed hence, undone by death, held fast 99 in earth's embrace." This is a far-away fore-note to Gray's Elegy. Love Poems A surprising modernness is found in The Wife's Lament and The Love Letter. The clear personal note in these two little lyrics sets them quite apart from the general tone of AngloSaxon poetry; they mark the beginning of English Earliest love poetry. In the first the forlorn wife, abandoned by her husband, homeless and friendless, pours forth her vain yearnings for the love of other days, which now "is as it had never been." With a climax of despair, she closes her lament: “Alas, what woe is hers, who waits with hopeless longing for her beloved." In The Love Letter the wooden tablet upon which the message is carved is personified as the speaker, who bids the betrothed come over the sea to her lover: As soon as ever thou shalt hear, on the edges of the cliff, Two celebrated fragments of poetry, belonging to the early heroic period, must be briefly mentioned: Waldhere and The Fight at Finnsburg. Waldhere is a part of a lost poem connected with an early German cycle of epics out of which War-Songs grew the Nibelungenlied, the great foundation epic of German literature. This two-page fragment, therefore, is interesting as a connecting link between our Anglo-Saxon ancestors and our German kinsfolk. The Fight at Finnsburg, which is the theme of one of the gleemen's songs in Beowulf, is a ringing war-song, describing the fierce clash of battle. While Hnæf and his warriors are asleep, the hall is attacked by the enemy with fire and sword. The chief shouts to his men in warning and exhortation: "This is not the day-dawn in the east, nor the flight of a dragon, nor are the hall-gables afire, but the birds of battle sing and deeds of woe are at hand. Awake ye, my men of war, take your shields in hand, be in the front of the fight, be brave." Then there was a terrible din of mortal conflict, a "flash of swords as if all Finnsburg were afire"; and the greedy raven hovered over the slain, "swart and dark-gleaming." The form of this old poetry seems strange and uncouth. We do not recognize our own English in the language, nor any rhythmic beauty in the verse; yet elements of this early language and versification are still thoroughly alive Language in our literature. Anglo-Saxon is an inflected speech, like Latin, or more nearly like modern German, with which it is closely allied by race kinship. It has an elaborate system of verbal endings to denote case, tense, gender, number, and person. The change from Anglo-Saxon to the English of to-day has been a continuous process of decay in formal grammar and loss in vocabulary, with compensating gains in vocabulary from outside sources. The verse structure is simple and monotonous, possessing little music, but much crude strength and effectiveness when properly interpreted by the voice. The short, rugged verses fall like sword-strokes in battle. The lines are Versification of varying length and are unrhymed. The meter depends upon accent and alliteration. Each line is divided into two parts by a rhythmic pause. In each part there are, regularly, two accented syllables; two of these syllables in the first part and one in the second begin with a vowel or are alliterated, that is, begin with the same consonant. Often there is only one alliterative letter in each part. Another prominent feature of this poetry is repetition of thought and expression, apparently for emphasis—a characteristic common in all primitive verse. A few lines from Beowulf will illustrate the meter: |