V
320Stone-bright the street:[1] it showed the way
to the crowd of clansmen. Corselets glistened
hand-forged, hard; on their harness bright
the steel ring sang,[2] as they strode along
in mail of battle, and marched to the hall.
325There, weary of ocean, the wall along
they set their bucklers, their broad shields, down,
and bowed them to bench: the breastplates clanged,
war-gear of men; their weapons stacked,
spears of the seafarers stood together,
330gray-tipped ash: that iron band
was worthily weaponed!—A warrior proud
asked of the heroes their home and kin.
“Whence, now, bear ye burnished shields,
harness gray and helmets grim,
335spears in multitude ? Messenger, I,
Hrothgar’s herald! Heroes so many
ne’er met I as strangers of mood so strong,
’Tis plain that for prowess, not plunged into exile,
for high-hearted valor, Hrothgar ye seek!”
340Him the sturdy-in-war bespake with words,
proud earl of the Weders answer made,
- ↑ Either merely paved, the strata via of the Romans, or else thought of as a sort of mosaic, an extravagant touch like the reckless waste of gold on the walls and roofs of a hall.—Stone buildings, it will be noted, are for old English poetry a mystery, a legacy of the past and its demi-gods—“work of giants”; for prose they pass as fit only for kings. Asser in his Life of Alfred (ed. Stevenson, 91, 23, and p. 154) calls them villae regiae. The common Germanic hatred of cities and of stone houses is familiar from the rhetoric of Tacitus.
- ↑ See Finnsburg, vv. 7 f . for a more striking personification.
