ases of life among the
Anglo-Saxons:--

"One shall sharp hunger slay;
One shall the storms beat down;
One be destroyed by darts,
One die in war.
Orre shall live losing
The light of his eyes,
Feel blindly with his fingers;
And one lame of foot.
With sinew-wound wearily
Wasteth away.
Musing and mourning;
With death in his mind.
* * * * *
One shall die by the dagger,
In wrath, drenched with ale,
Wild through the wine, on the mead bench
Too swift with his words
Too swift with his words;
Shall the wretched one lose."[9]

The songs that we have noted, together with _Beowulf_, the greatest of
them all, will give a fair idea of _scopic_ poetry.

BEOWULF

The Oldest Epic of the Teutonic Race.--The greatest monument of
Anglo-Saxon poetry is called _Beowulf_, from the name of its hero. His
character and exploits give unity and dignity to the poem and raise it
to the rank of an epic.

The subject matter is partly historical and partly mythical. The deeds
and character of an actual hero may have furnished the first
suggestions for the songs, which were finally elaborated into
_Beowulf_, as we now have it. The poem was probably a long time in
process of evolution, and many different _scops_ doubtless added new
episodes to the song, altering it by expansion and contraction under
the inspiration of different times and places. Finally, it seems
probable that some one English poet gave the work its present form,
making it a more unified whole, and incorporating in it Christian
opinions.

We do not know when the first _scop_ sang of Beowulf's exploits; but
he probably began before the ancestors of the English came to England.
We are unable to ascertain how long _Beowulf_ was in process of
evolution; but there is internal evidence for thinking that part of
the poem could not have been composed before 500 A.D. Ten Brink, a
great German authority, thinks that Beowulf was given its present form
not far from 700 A.D. The unique manuscript in the British Museum is
written in the West Saxon dialect of Alfred the Great's time
(849-901).

The characters, scenery, and action of _Beowulf_ belong to the older
Angle-land on the continent of Europe; but the poem is essentially
English, even though the chief action is laid in what is now known as
Denmark and the southern part of Sweden. Hrothgar's hall, near which
the hero performed two of his great exploits, was prob