So he told his sorrowful tidings, and little {39d}
he lied, the loyal man of word or of work. The
warriors rose; sad, they climbed to the Cliff-of-Eagles,
went, welling with tears, the wonder to view.
Found on the sand there, stretched at rest, their
lifeless lord, who had lavished rings of old upon
them. Ending-day had dawned on the doughty-one;
death had seized in woful slaughter the Weders’
king. There saw they, besides, the strangest
being, loathsome, lying their leader near, prone
on the field. The fiery dragon, fearful fiend,
with flame was scorched. Reckoned by feet, it
was fifty measures in length as it lay. Aloft
erewhile it had revelled by night, and anon come back,
seeking its den; now in death’s sure clutch
it had come to the end of its earth-hall joys.
By it there stood the stoups and jars; dishes lay
there, and dear-decked swords eaten with rust, as,
on earth’s lap resting, a thousand winters they
waited there. For all that heritage huge, that
gold of bygone men, was bound by a spell, {39e} so
the treasure-hall could be touched by none of human
kind, — save that Heaven’s King,
God himself, might give whom he would, Helper of Heroes,
the hoard to open, — even such a man as
seemed to him meet.
XL
A perilous path, it proved, he {40a} trod who
heinously hid, that hall within, wealth under wall!
Its watcher had killed one of a few, {40b} and the
feud was avenged in woful fashion. Wondrous seems
it, what manner a man of might and valor oft ends
his life, when the earl no longer in mead-hall may
live with loving friends. So Beowulf, when that
barrow’s warden he sought, and the struggle;
himself knew not in what wise he should wend from
the world at last. For {40c} princes potent,
who placed the gold, with a curse to doomsday covered
it deep, so that marked with sin the man should be,
hedged with horrors, in hell-bonds fast, racked with
plagues, who should rob their hoard. Yet no greed
for gold, but the grace of heaven, ever the king had
kept in view.
{40d} Wiglaf spake, the son of Weohstan:
— “At the mandate of one, oft warriors
many sorrow must suffer; and so must we. The
people’s-shepherd showed not aught of care for
our counsel, king beloved! That guardian of gold
he should grapple not, urged we, but let him lie where
he long had been in his earth-hall waiting the end
of the world, the hest of heaven. — This
hoard is ours but grievously gotten; too grim the
fate which thither carried our king and lord.
I was within there, and all I viewed, the chambered
treasure, when chance allowed me (and my path was
made in no pleasant wise) under the earth-wall.
Eager, I seized such heap from the hoard as hands
could bear and hurriedly carried it hither back to
my liege and lord. Alive was he still, still
wielding his wits. The wise old man spake much
in his sorrow, and sent you greetings and bade that
ye build, when he breathed no more, on the place of
