The verse narratives of the Germanic peoples during this period are poetically homogeneous. _Hildebrand_, indeed, is more stinted than _Beowulf_, and the north inclines more than the west toward lyric; but they all have essentially the same poetic.[45] Their epic conception is typically not of a progressive story, but of a situation. The hero is imagined in a crisis. Sometimes abrupt or stinted, they nevertheless prevail by unity. This mainspring of their poetic is their habitual means toward tragic intensity.[46] Even more constant is their movement in detail. The verse consists of two staves separated by a marked cæsura, but corresponding by alliteration. The alliteration is not, as in Latin verse, an added suggestion; it is constituent; it makes the verse. Him ða Scyld ᵹewat to ᵹescæphwile felahror feran on frean wære; hi hyne þa ætbæron to brimes faroðe, swæse ᵹesiþas, swa he selfa bæd, þenden wordum weold wine Scyldinᵹa, leof landfruma lanᵹe ahte. þær æt hyðe stod hrinᵹedstefna isiᵹ and utfus, æþelinᵹes fær: _Beowulf_, 26-33 (Wülcker’s revised text). No less essential is the two-stave movement, so strong in Germanic habit that it may well have been influential in handling even Latin hexameters with cæsura reinforced by rime.[47] In Anglo-Saxon the staves show distinct recurrent types; and the verses generally tend, as above, to “run on,” whereas the Old Norse are oftener composed in the fashion of the “closed couplet.” But these differences are unimportant beside the constant binary movement. The verses are not equal in number of syllables; their stress rhythm is patterned in alliterated pairs. Then departed Scyld at his appointed hour, glorious to go unto God’s keeping. Together they bore him to breaking surges, bosom companions, as he bade himself while he wielded words, warden of Scyldings, loved land-ruler, long their master. At the roadstead bode his ringèd bow, icy, eager, atheling’s ship. They laid him there, beloved chieftain, bringer of booty, on the breast of the ship, mighty by the mast. There were many treasures from long voyages laden beside him. Ne’er heard I that comelier keel provided hacking weapons and harness warlike, brands and byrnies. On his bosom lay store unstinted that must start with him on the flood’s realm to float outward.[48] _Beowulf_, 26-42.