Swa scrithende So wandering on gesceapum hweorfath the world about, glee men gumena gleemen do roam geond grunda fela; through many lands; thearfe secgath they say their needs thonc word sprecath, they speak their thanks, Simle suth oththe north sure, south or north sumne gemetath, some one to meet, gydda gleawne of songs to judge geofam unhncawne and gifts not grudge.[2] There are few early Anglo-Saxon poems that can be called "lyrics"; they are rather narratives, as in the case of the songs of war, the battles of Brunanburh and Maldon; or "elegiac," and reflective, as in "The Ruined City," though personal emotion, a characteristic of the lyric, often appears in the Christian poems and elsewhere as we shall see. "Beowulf" the chief poem may be called a brief "epic," a narrative of over 3000 lines, on great heroic adventures. Such a poem would be sung in hall, to beguile more than one long winter night. Beowulf. It is impossible to be certain about the date when the original form of this great old poem, "Beowulf," was first composed, because it contains, on the one hand, descriptions of the ancient heathen way of living, thinking, manners, and customs; and, on the other hand, has many allusions to Christian doctrine, which the Anglo-Saxons knew nothing of till after they had quite conquered this country. The poet of "Beowulf" as it now exists, had read the Bible, or knew part of its contents. We must look first at the poem as it stands, and the story as it is told, or rather at the stories, for there are several. One Beowulf, not our hero, was the son of Scyld. Scyld died, and, in place of Christian burial, was placed in his ship, with arms and treasures, and so sailed out to sea at the wind's will. Not so, when his time came, was _our_ Beowulf buried; that is, Beowulf the hero of the poem, for the earlier Beowulf, son of Scyld, was another man. The grandson of Scyld was Hrothgar (whose name becomes Roger in later times), and Hrothgar was a Danish king, builder of Heorot, a princely hall. His happiness awoke the envy of Grendel, a fiend of the wilds. The Christian author of the poem, as it stands, thinks that Grendel and other monsters are descendants of Cain! The nobles slept in the great hall, whither Grendel came and caught away thirty of them. Men sought other sleeping-rooms, but Grendel still came and slew them. The house was empty, and men promised sacrifices to their false gods all in vain: "they knew not the true God," yet the poet often forgets their ignorance, and makes them speak like Christians: