Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, <br />nursed a hard grievance. It harrowed him <br />to hear the din of the loud banquet <br />every day in the hall, the harp being struck <br />and the clear songs of a skilled poet <br />telling the mastery of man's beginnings, <br />How the Almighty had made the earth <br />a gleaming plain girdled with waters; <br />in his splendour He set the sun and the moon <br />to be earth's lamplight, lanterns for men, <br />and filled the broad lap of the world <br />with branches and leaves; and quickened life <br />in every other thing that moved. <br /> <br />So times were pleasant for the people there <br />until finally one, a fiend out of hell, <br />began to work his evil in the world. <br />Grendel was the name of the grim demon <br />haunting the marches, marauding around the heath <br />and the desolate fens; he had dwelt for a time <br />among the banished monsters, <br />Cain's clan, whom the Creator had outlawed <br />and condemned as outcasts. For the killing of Abel <br />the Eternal Lord had exacted a price: <br />Cain got no good for committing that murder <br />because the Almighty made him anathema <br />and out of the curse of his exile there sprang <br />ogres and elves and evil phantoms <br />and the giants too who strove with God <br />time and again until He gave then their reward. <br /> <br />So, after nightfall, Grendel set out <br />for the lofty house, to see how the Ring-Danes <br />were settling into it after their drink, <br />and there he came upon them, a company of the best <br />asleep from their feasting, insensible to pain <br />and human sorrow. Suddenly then <br />the God-cursed brute was creating havoc: <br />greedy and grim.<br /><br />Anonymous Olde English<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/grendel-3/
