In the mist of the morning many a warrior Stood round the gift-hall, as the story is told me: Folk-princes fared then from far and from near Through long-stretching journeys to look at the wonder, The footprints of the foeman. Few of the warriors Who gazed on the foot-tracks of the inglorious creature His parting from life pained very deeply, How, weary in spirit, off from those regions In combats conquered he carried his traces, Fated and flying, to the flood of the nickers. There in bloody billows bubbled the currents, The angry eddy was everywhere mingled And seething with gore, welling with sword-blood; He death-doomed had hid him, when reaved of his joyance He laid down his life in the lair he had fled to, His heathenish spirit, where hell did receive him. Thence the friends from of old backward turned them, And many a younker from merry adventure, Striding their stallions, stout from the seaward, Heroes on horses. There were heard very often Beowulf’s praises; many often asserted That neither south nor north, in the circuit of waters, O’er outstretching earth-plain, none other was better ’Mid bearers of war-shields, more worthy to govern,