The hail flew in showers about me; and there I heard only
    The roar of the sea, ice-cold waves, and the song of the swan;
    For pastime the gannets’ cry served me; the kittiwakes’ chatter
    For laughter of men; and for mead drink the call of the sea mews. 
    When storms on the rocky cliffs beat, then the terns, icy-feathered,
    Made answer; full oft the sea eagle forebodingly screamed,
    The eagle with pinions wave-wet.... 
    The shadows of night became darker, it snowed from the north;
    The world was enchained by the frost; hail fell upon earth;
    ’T was the coldest of grain.  Yet the thoughts of my heart now are throbbing
    To test the high streams, the salt waves in tumultuous play. 
    Desire in my heart ever urges my spirit to wander,
    To seek out the home of the stranger in lands afar off. 
      There is no one that dwells upon earth, so exalted in mind,
    But that he has always a longing, a sea-faring passion
    For what the Lord God shall bestow, be it honor or death. 
    No heart for the harp has he, nor for acceptance of treasure,
    No pleasure has he in a wife, no delight in the world,
    Nor in aught save the roll of the billows; but always a longing,
    A yearning uneasiness, hastens him on to the sea. 
      The woodlands are captured by blossoms, the hamlets grow fair,
    Broad meadows are beautiful, earth again bursts into life,
    And all stir the heart of the wanderer eager to journey,
    So he meditates going afar on the pathway of tides. 
    The cuckoo, moreover, gives warning with sorrowful note,
    Summer’s harbinger sings, and forebodes to the heart bitter sorrow. 
      Now my spirit uneasily turns in the heart’s narrow chamber,
    Now wanders forth over the tide, o’er the home of the whale,
    To the ends of the earth—­and comes back to me. 
      Eager and greedy,
    The lone wanderer screams, and resistlessly drives my soul onward,
    Over the whale-path, over the tracts of the sea.[18]

THE FIGHT AT FINNSBURGH AND WALDERE.  Two other of our oldest poems well deserve mention.  The “Fight at Finnsburgh” is a fragment of fifty lines, discovered on the inside of a piece of parchment drawn over the wooden covers of a book of homilies.  It is a magnificent war song, describing with Homeric power the defense of a hall by Hnaef[19] with sixty warriors, against the attack of Finn and his army.  At midnight, when Hnaef and his men are sleeping, they are surrounded by an army rushing in with fire and sword.  Hnaef springs to his feet at the first alarm and wakens his warriors with a call to action that rings like a bugle blast: 

    This no eastward dawning is, nor is here a dragon flying,
    Nor of this high hall are the horns a burning;
    But they rush upon us here—­now the ravens sing,
    Growling is the gray wolf, grim the war-wood rattles,
    Shield to shaft is answering.[20]