< Page:Gummere (1909) The Oldest English Epic.djvu
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BEOWULF
83
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, ranIt 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.
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.”Alone I sat in the shade of a grove,This represents five lines of Latin:—
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. . . .Inter fiorigeras fecundi cespitis herbas,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.
flamine ventorum resonantibus undique ramis,
arboris umbriferae maestus sub tegmine solus
dum sedi, subito planctu turbatus amaro,
carmina prae tristi cecini haec lugubria mente. . . .
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