During these first centuries in England, the Anglo-Saxon endowment of character and faculty becomes clearly shown in events and expressed in literature. A battle-loving people whose joy in fight flashes from their “shield-play” and “sword-game” epithets, even as their fondness for seafaring is seen in such phrases as “wave-floater,” “foam-necked,” “like a swan” breasting the “swan-road” of the sea. But their sword-games and wave-floatings had purpose, a quality that became large and steady as generation after generation, unstopped by fortress, forest, or river, pushed on the conquest of England. When that conquest had been completed, and these Saxons were in turn hard pressed by their Danish kin more lately sailing from the north, their courage still could not be overborne. It is reflected in the overweening mood of _Maldon_, the poem which is also called _The Death of Byrhtnoth_. The cold grey scene lies in the north of England. The Viking invaders demand rings of gold; Byrhtnoth, the Alderman of the East Saxons, retorts scornfully. So the fight begins with arrows and spear throwings across the black water. The Saxons hold the ford. The Sea-wolves cannot force it. They call for leave to cross. In his overmood Byrhtnoth answers: “To you this is yielded: come straightway to us; God only wots who shall hold fast the place of battle.” In the bitter end when Byrhtnoth is killed, still speaks his thane: “Mind shall the harder be, heart the keener, mood the greater, as our might lessens. Here lies our Elder hewn to death. I am old; I will not go hence. I think to lay me down by the side of my lord.” The spiritual gifts of the Anglo-Saxons are discernible in their language, which so adequately could render the Bible[175] and the phraseology of the Seven Liberal Arts. Its terms were somewhat more concrete and physical than the Latin, but readily lent themselves to figurative meanings. More palpably the poetry with its reflection upon life shows the endowment of the race. Marked is its elegiac mood. In an old poem is heard the voice of one who sails with hapless care the exile’s way, and must forego his dear lord’s gifts: in sleep he kisses him, and again lays hands and head upon those knees, as in times past. Then wakes the friendless man, and sees the ocean’s waves, the gulls spreading their wings, rime and snow falling. More impersonal is the heavy tone of a meditative fragment over the ruins, apparently, of a Roman city: “Wondrous is this wall-stone, fates have broken it, have burst the stronghold, roofs are fallen, towers tottering, hoar gate-towers despoiled, shattered the battlements, riven, fallen. * * * * Earth’s grasp holdeth the mighty workmen worn away, done for, in the hard grip of the grave.”