Yrmenlafes yldra brothor,
Min run-wita, ond min raed-bora;
Eaxl-gestealla, thonne we on orlege
Hafelan weredon, thonne hniton fethan,
Eoferas cnysedan: swylc scolde eorl wesan
AEtheling aer-god, swylc AEschere waes.'

(Hrothgar spake, helm of the Scyldings: 'Ask not after good tidings.
Sorrow is renewed among the Dane-folk. Dead is AEschere, Yrmenlaf's
elder brother, who read me rune and bore me rede; comrade at shoulder
when we fended our heads in war and the boar-helms rang. Even so
should we each be an atheling passing good, as AEschere was.')

This is simple, manly, dignified. It avoids the besetting sin of the
Anglo-Saxon gleeman--the pretentious trick of calling things 'out of
their right names' for the sake of literary effect (as if e.g. the sea
could be improved by being phrased into 'the seals' domain'). Its
Anglo-Saxon _staccato_, so tiresome in sustained narrative, here happens
to suit the broken utterance of mourning. In short, it exhibits the
Anglo-Saxon Muse at her best, not at her customary. But set beside it a
passage in which Homer tells of a fallen warrior--at haphazard, as it
were, a single corpse chosen from the press of battle--

[Greek: polla de chermadia megal aspidas estuphelixam
marnamenon amph auton o d en strophaliggi konies
keito megas megalosti, lelasmenos ipposunaom.]

Can you--can anyone--compare the two passages and miss to see that they
belong to two different kingdoms of poetry? I lay no stress here on
'architectonics.' I waive that the "Iliad" is a well-knit epic and the
story of "Beowulf" a shapeless monstrosity. I ask you but to note the
difference of note, of accent, of mere music. And I have quoted you but a
passage of the habitual Homer. To assure yourselves that he can rise even
from this habitual height to express the extreme of majesty and of human
anguish in poetry which betrays no false note, no strain upon the store
of emotion man may own with self-respect and exhibit without derogation
of dignity, turn to the last book of the "Iliad" and read of Priam
raising to his lips the hand that has murdered his son. I say confidently
that no one unable to distinguish this, as poetry, from the very best of
"Beowulf" is fit to engage upon business as a literary critic.

In "Beowulf" then, as an imported poem, let us allow much barbarian
merit. It came of dubious ancestry, and it had no progeny. The pretence
th