Now let us open the door over which is written _Beowulf_. It is one of the oldest and rudest of the golden doors in the Great Palace of English Poetry, but also one of the most precious. The pictures we are to see are beautiful sometimes. More often they are cruel and pitiless. * * * * * The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the air was as sweet-smelling as if it rose from fields of lilies, and it was the very springtime of the world some two thousand years ago. By song little Widsith has seen his master bind all men and all beasts. Not only the fish and worms forgot their tasks, but even the cattle stopped grazing, and, where they passed, men and children paused to listen. They were on their way to the Great Hall to have a sight of the hero, Beowulf. Behind them lay the sea and the coast-guard pacing up and down. Before them, landward, rose a long, high-roofed hall. It had gable ends from which towered up huge stag-horns. And the roof shone only less brightly than the sun, for it was covered with metal. About the Great Hall toward which little Widsith and the master were traveling was the village made up of tiny houses, each in its own patch of tilled ground and apple-trees, and with fields in which sheep and oxen and horses were pastured. Narrow paths wound in and out everywhere. In front of the Hall was a broad meadow across which the king and queen and their lords and ladies were used to walk. There was much going on that day in Heorot. Flocks of children were playing about the pretty paths. Mothers and aunts and older sisters sat spinning in the open doorways. Beyond the wide meadow young men and boys were leading or riding spirited horses up and down to exercise them. And all--men, women, and children alike--were talking about Beowulf, who had come to kill the monster Grendel and free the people of Heorot. Beowulf had not much more than entered the Hall when the scôp, or singer, as little Widsith's master was called, entered too. In those days singers were welcome everywhere. They saw Beowulf stride mightily across the many-colored floor of Heorot and go up to the old King. And they heard his voice, which sounded like the rumble of a heavy sea on their rock-bound coast. "Hrothgar!" he said to the old King, "across the sea's way have I come to help thee." "Of thee, Beowulf, have we need," replied the old King in tears, "for Heorot has suffered much from the monster." "I will deliver thee, Hrothgar," said Beowulf, in his great voice; "thee and all who dwell in Heorot." "Steep and stony are the sea cliffs, joyless our woods and wolf-haunted, robbed is our Heorot, for to Grendel can no man do aught. He breaks the bones of my people. And those of my people he cannot eat in Heorot he drags away on to the moor and devours alive."