Beowulf: An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem
Hrothgar, king of the Danes, builds a magnificent mead-hall called Heorot, but his people's joy soon turns to terror. Grendel, a monster brooding in the nearby fens, cannot bear the sounds of feasting and begins a twelve-year campaign of slaughter, dragging off and devouring Hrothgar's warriors night after night. Across the sea, the young Geatish hero Beowulf hears of this misery and sails with fourteen chosen companions to free the aged king. Lying in wait through the night, he meets Grendel in a savage hand-to-hand struggle, and goes on to face the monster's vengeful mother and, in later years, a fire-breathing dragon.
As the oldest surviving epic in English, Beowulf preserves the values of a vanished Germanic world: loyalty between lord and thane, the pursuit of glory, the weight of fate, and the courage to face inevitable death. Its alliterative verse, heroic boasts, and elegiac sorrow give voice to the hopes and fears of our ancestors, making it both a thrilling adventure and the foundation stone of English literature.
How it begins
The present work is a modest effort to reproduce approximately, in modern measures, the venerable epic, Beowulf. Approximately , I repeat; for a very close reproduction of Anglo-Saxon verse would, to a large extent, be prose to a modern ear. The Heyne-Socin text and glossary have been closely followed. Occasionally a deviation has been made, but always for what seemed good and sufficient reason. The translator does not aim to be an editor. Once in a while, however, he has added a conjecture of his own to the emendations quoted from the criticisms of other students of the poem. This work is addressed to two classes of readers. From both of these alike the translator begs sympathy and co-operation. The Anglo-Saxon scholar he hopes to please by adhering faithfully to the original. The student of English literature he aims to interest by giving him, in modern garb, the most ancient epic of our race. This is a bold and venturesome undertaking; and yet there must be some students of the Teutonic past willing to follow even a daring guide, if they may read in modern phrases of the sorrows of Hrothgar, of the prowess of Beowulf, and of the feelings that stirred the hearts of our forefathers in their primeval homes.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.