Beowulf: A Verse Translation from the Anglo-Saxon

Beowulf is a difficult poem, one that many people are forced to experience in school at one point or another. I have read the poem a few times, under different translations, and only one of those times was under the coercion of grading pressure. This is the first time I have enjoyed reading the poem. Oh yes, it is still a long form memento mori, and it still contains so much of that florid boasting the Danes were so fond of, but stripped of the pretense of latinization the text is so much more approachable. It almost has a beat, and I found myself rapping it in my mind along with the music I was listening to. Marvelous.

As for the poem, it tells of an interesting moment in human history, when the people of Europe found themselves both under the eye of a strange foreign god, but also found that all of their old friends in the woods were suddenly very hostile, as if under orders to attack, and were bearing out one monster after another, as if someone wrote that into their stories and then believed it really hard. It's no wonder they were so terrified, and clung to their weapons so hard. They called out to that new god, but they seemed to have more faith in their steel. And who can blame them? Then Grendel comes, immune even to that. It's hard to imagine their horror.

It's funny, I've read this so many times but I did not recall the third section with the dragon, which is bizarre as it has so many leitmotifs to The Hobbit and is, in many ways, the most entertaining part of the poem. Is it that my previous readings had placed me into a stupor at this point by how dull the translation was, and I simply failed to recall? Or is it some wavering in the colors of the rainbow, one of those mandala things? Who knows, I enjoyed reading it regardless.