Halleck's New English Literature Part 4

A greater _scop_, looking at life through Saxon eyes, sings:--

"We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."[6]

The _scop_ in the song called _The Wanderer (Exeter Book)_ tells how fleeting are riches, friend, kinsman, maiden,--all the "earth-stead,"

and he also makes us think of Shakespeare's "insubstantial pageant faded" which leaves "not a rack behind."

Another old song, also found in the _Exeter Book_, is the _Seafarer_.

We must imagine the _scop_ recalling vivid experiences to our early ancestors with this song of the sea:--

"Hail flew in hard showers.

And nothing I heard But the wrath of the waters, The icy-cold way At times the swan's song; In the scream of the gannet I sought for my joy, In the moan of the sea whelp For laughter of men, In the song of the sea-mew For drinking of mead."[7]

To show that love of the sea yet remains one of the characteristics of English poetry, we may quote by way of comparison a song sung more than a thousand years later, in Victoria's reign:--

"The wind is as iron that rings, The foam heads loosen and flee; It swells and welters and swings, The pulse of the tide of the sea.

Let the wind shake our flag like a feather, Like the plumes of the foam of the sea!

In the teeth of the hard glad a weather, In the blown wet face of the sea."[8]

Kipling in _A Song of the English_ says of the sea:--

"...there's never a wave of all her waves But marks our English dead."

Another song from the _Exeter Book_ is called _The Fortunes of Men_.

It gives vivid pictures of certain phases of life among the Anglo-Saxons:--

"One shall sharp hunger slay; One shall the storms beat down; One be destroyed by darts, One die in war.

Orre shall live losing The light of his eyes, Feel blindly with his fingers; And one lame of foot.

With sinew-wound wearily Wasteth away.

Musing and mourning; With death in his mind.

One shall die by the dagger, In wrath, drenched with ale, Wild through the wine, on the mead bench Too swift with his words Too swift with his words; Shall the wretched one lose."[9]

The songs that we have noted, together with _Beowulf_, the greatest of them all, will give a fair idea of _scopic_ poetry.

BEOWULF

The Oldest Epic of the Teutonic Race.--The greatest monument of Anglo-Saxon poetry is called _Beowulf_, from the name of its hero. His character and exploits give unity and dignity to the poem and raise it to the rank of an epic.

The subject matter is partly historical and partly mythical. The deeds and character of an actual hero may have furnished the first suggestions for the songs, which were finally elaborated into _Beowulf_, as we now have it. The poem was probably a long time in process of evolution, and many different _scops_ doubtless added new episodes to the song, altering it by expansion and contraction under the inspiration of different times and places. Finally, it seems probable that some one English poet gave the work its present form, making it a more unified whole, and incorporating in it Christian opinions.

We do not know when the first _scop_ sang of Beowulf's exploits; but he probably began before the ancestors of the English came to England.

We are unable to ascertain how long _Beowulf_ was in process of evolution; but there is internal evidence for thinking that part of the poem could not have been composed before 500 A.D. Ten Brink, a great German authority, thinks that Beowulf was given its present form not far from 700 A.D. The unique ma.n.u.script in the British Museum is written in the West Saxon dialect of Alfred the Great's time (849-901).

The characters, scenery, and action of _Beowulf_ belong to the older Angle-land on the continent of Europe; but the poem is essentially English, even though the chief action is laid in what is now known as Denmark and the southern part of Sweden. Hrothgar's hall, near which the hero performed two of his great exploits, was probably on the island of Seeland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF BEGINNING OF COTTON MS. OF BEOWULF.]

TRANSLATION

Lo! we, of the Gar-Danes in distant days, The folk-kings' fame have found.

How deeds of daring the aethelings did.

Oft Scyld-Scefing from hosts of schathers, From many men the mead seats [reft].

The student who wishes to enter into the spirit of the poem will do well to familiarize himself with the position of these coasts, and with a description of their natural features in winter as well as in summer. Heine says of the sea which Beowulf sailed:--

"Before me rolleth a waste of water ... and above me go rolling the storm clouds, the formless dark gray daughters of air, which from the sea in cloudy buckets scoop up the water, ever wearied lifting and lifting, and then pour it again in the sea, a mournful, wearisome business. Over the sea, flat on his face, lies the monstrous, terrible North Wind, sighing and sinking his voice as in secret, like an old grumbler; for once in good humor, unto the ocean he talks, and he tells her wonderful stories."

Beowulf's Three Great Exploits.--The hero of the poem engaged in three great contests, all of which were prompted by unselfishness and by a desire to relieve human misery. Beowulf had much of the spirit that animates the social worker to-day. If such a hero should live in our time, he would probably be distinguished fur social service, for fighting the forces of evil which cripple or destroy so many human beings.

Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, built a hall, named Heorot, where his followers could drink mead, listen to the scop, enjoy the music of the harp, and find solace in social intercourse during the dreary winter evenings.

"So liv'd on all happy the host of the kinsmen In game and in glee, until one night began, A fiend out of h.e.l.l-pit, the framing of evil, And Grendel forsooth the grim guest was hight, The mighty mark-strider the holder of moorland, The fen and the fastness."[10]

This monster, Grendel, came from the moors and devoured thirty of the thanes. For twelve winters he visited Heorot and killed some of the guests whenever he heard the sound of festivity in the hall, until at length the young hero Beowulf, who lived a day's sail from Hrothgar, determined to rescue Heorot from this curse. The youth selected fourteen warriors and on a "foamy-necked floater, most like to a bird," he sailed to Hrothgar.

Beowulf stated his mission, and he and his companions determined to remain in Heorot all night. Grendel heard them and came.

"...he quickly laid hold of A soldier asleep, suddenly tore him, Bit his bone-prison, the blood drank in currents, Swallowed in mouthfuls."[11]

Bare-handed, Beowulf grappled with the monster, and they wrestled up and down the hall, which was shaken to its foundations. This terrible contest ended when Beowulf tore away the arm and shoulder of Grendel, who escaped to the marshes to die.

In honor of the victory, Hrothgar gave to Beowulf many presents and a banquet in Heorot. After the feast, the warriors slept in the hall, but Beowulf went to the palace. He had been gone but a short time, when in rushed Grendel's mother, to avenge the death of her son. She seized a warrior, the king's dearest friend, and carried him away. In the morning, the king said to Beowulf:--

"My trusty friend AEschere is dead... The cruel hag has wreaked on him her vengeance. The country folk said there were two of them, one the semblance of a woman; the other the specter of a man. Their haunt is in the remote land, in the crags of the wolf, the wind-beaten cliffs, and untrodden bogs, where the dismal stream plunges into the drear abyss of an awful lake, overhung with a dark and grizzly wood rooted down to the water's edge, where a lurid flame plays nightly on the surface of the flood--and there lives not the man who knows its depth! So dreadful is the place that the hunted stag, hard driven by the hounds, will rather die on the bank than find a shelter there. A place of terror! When the wind rises, the waves mingle hurly-burly with the clouds, the air is stifling and rumbles with thunder. To thee alone we look for relief."[12]

Beowulf knew that a second and harder contest was at hand, but without hesitation he followed the b.l.o.o.d.y trail of Grendel's mother, until it disappeared at the edge of a terrible flood. Undaunted by the dragons and serpents that made their home within the depths, he grasped a sword and plunged beneath the waves. After sinking what seemed to him a day's s.p.a.ce, he saw Grendel's mother, who came forward to meet him.

She dragged him into her dwelling, where there was no water, and the fight began. The issue was for a time doubtful; but at last Beowulf ran her through with a gigantic sword, and she fell dead upon the floor of her dwelling. A little distance away, he saw the dead body of Grendel. The hero cut off the head of the monster and hastened away to Hrothgar's court. After receiving much praise and many presents, Beowulf and his warriors sailed to their own land, where he ruled as king for fifty years.

He engaged in his third and hardest conflict when he was old. A firedrake, angered at the loss of a part of a treasure, which he had for three hundred years been guarding in a cavern, laid waste the land in the hero's kingdom. Although Beowulf knew that this dragon breathed flames of fire and that mortal man could not long withstand such weapons, he sought the cavern which sheltered the destroyer and fought the most terrible battle of his life. He killed the dragon, but received mortal hurt from the enveloping flames. The old hero had finally fallen; but he had through life fought a good fight, and he could say as the twilight pa.s.sed into the dark:--

"I have ruled the people fifty years; no folk-king was there of them that dwelt about me durst touch me with his sword or cow me through terror. I bided at home the hours of destiny, guarded well mine own, sought not feuds with guile, swore not many an oath unjustly."[13]

The poem closes with this fitting epitaph for the hero:--

"Quoth they that he was a world-king forsooth, The mildest of all men, unto men kindest, To his folk the most gentlest, most yearning of fame."[14]

Wherein Beowulf is Typical of the Anglo-Saxon Race.--_Beowulf_ is by far the most important Anglo-Saxon poem, because it presents in the rough the persistent characteristics of the race. This epic shows the ideals of our ancestors, what they held most dear, the way they lived and died.

I. We note the love of liberty and law, the readiness to fight any dragon that threatened these. The English _Magna Charta_ and _Pet.i.tion of Right_ and the American _Declaration of Independence_ are an extension of the application of the same principles embodied in _Beowulf_. The old-time spirit of war still prevails in all branches of the race; but the contest is to-day directed against dragons of a different type from Grendel,--against myriad forms of industrial and social injustice and against those forces which have been securing special privileges for some and denying equal opportunity for all.

II. _Beowulf_ is a recognition in general of the great moral forces of the universe. The poem upholds the ideals of personal manliness, bravery, loyalty, devotion to duty. The hero has the ever-present consciousness that death is preferable to dishonor. He taught his thane to sing:--

"Far better stainless death Than life's dishonored breath."

III. In this poem, the action outweighs the words. The keynote to _Beowulf_ is deeds. In New England, more than a thousand years later, Th.o.r.eau wrote, "Be not simply good; be good for something." In reading other literatures, for instance the Celtic, we often find that the words overbalance the action. The Celt tells us that when two bulls fought, the "sky was darkened by the turf thrown up by their feet and by the foam from their mouths. The province rang with their roar and the inhabitants hid in caves or climbed the hills."

Again, more attention is paid to the worth of the subject matter and to sincerity of utterance than to mere form or polish. The literature of this race has usually been more distinguished for the value of the thought than for artistic presentation. Prejudice is felt to-day against matter that relies mainly on art to secure effects.