The hall-haunter’s hate; to escape the fiend
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as to keep himself thereafter farther off and safer.So he held sway and struggled against the right,Solitary against all, till empty and unvisited 4 Stood the best of halls. Long was the time,Twelve years passing, that the lord of the ScyldingsSpent to learn pain, each grief there was,Each bursting sorrow; and so it became known,Became open to men, grievously recounted 150To the children of men, how Grendel foughtThat time with Hrothgar, waging his enmity,His sin-forced feud for many seasons,His seasonless strife; what peace would he haveWith any man of the host of Denmark?His deadliness was unshakeable: no settling with money:Nor did any counsellor have cause to expectGlorious reparation from the killer’s hands;But that was a monster remorseless to persecute,Dark with death’s shadow, both veteran and untried; 160He lay hid and plotted, he held the moors,Mist, endless night; and what man’s knowledgeCan map the gliding-ground of demon and damned?So mankind’s enemy, the terrible solitaryWent on accomplishing outrage on outrage,Heavy humiliations. Heorot was his house,That treasure-strewn hall through the hours of blackness.(—No coming openly to the throne or its giftsOr feeling its favour, forbidden by God.)It was sharp distress to the lord of the Scyldings, 170Heartbreak it was; often his chief menGathered in council to debate the meansThat might seem best to the brave in mindFor combating the panic terror of the raids.At times in their temples they made pagans’ vows,Sacrifices to their idols, in their speeches beseechingThe destroyer of souls to help the peopleIn their common affliction. Such was their custom,The hope of the heathen; it was hell that cameCalled back to theirminds, of the Creator they knewnothing, 10The Judge of all acts, the Lord God was strange to them,And indeed they were ignorant of the praise of heaven’sKing,
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