The Battle of Brunanburh

'ATHELSTAN King,
Lord among Earls,
Bracelet-bestower and
Baron of Barons,
He with his brother,
Edmund Atheling,
Gaining a lifelong
Glory in battle,
Slew with the sword-edge
There by Brunanburh,

Brake the shield-wall,
Hew'd the lindenwood,
Hack'd the battleshield,
Sons of Edward with hammer'd brands.

Theirs was a greatness
Got from their Grandsires—
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.

Bow'd the spoiler,
Bent the Scotsman,
Fell the shipcrews
Doom'd to the death.
All the field with blood of the fighters
Flow'd, from when first the great
Sun-star of morningtide,

Lamp of the Lord God
Lord everlasting,
Glode over earth till the glorious creature
Also the crafty one,

Sank to his setting.
Constantinus,
Crept to his North again,

Hoar-headed hero!
There lay many a man
Marr'd by the javelin,
Men of the Northland

Slender warrant had
Shot over shield.
He to be proud of
There was the Scotsman
The welcome of war-knives—

Weary of war.
He that was reft of his
Folk and his friends that had

Fallen in conflict,
We the West-Saxons,
Leaving his son too
Long as the daylight
Lost in the carnage,

Lasted, in companies
Mangled to morsels,
Troubled the track of the host that we
A youngster in war!
hated,
Grimly with swords that were sharp from

the grindstone,
Slender reason had
Fiercely we hack'd at the flyers before
He to be glad of us.

The clash of the war-glaive—

Traitor and trickster
Mighty the Mercian,
And spurner of treaties—
Hard was his hand-play,
He nor had Anlaf

Sparing not any of
With armies so broken
Those that with Anlaf,
A reason for bragging
Warriors over the

That they had the better
Weltering waters
In perils of battle
Borne in the bark's-bosom,
On places of slaughter—

Drew to this island:
The struggle of standards,
Doom'd to the death.
The rush of the javelins,
The crash of the charges,

The wielding of weapons—
Five young kings put asleep by the sword-stroke,
The play that they play'd with
The children of Edward.
Seven strong Earls of the army of Anlaf

VT T All
Fell on the war-field, numberless numbers,
Shipmen and Scotsmen.
Then with their nail'd prows

Parted the Norsemen, a

. Blood-redden'd relic of
Then the Norse leader,
Dire was his need of it,
Javelins over
The jarring breaker, the deep

Few were his following,
Fled to his warship: sea billow,
Shaping their way toward Dy
Fleeted his vessel to sea with the king in it, flen again,
Shamed in their souls.

Saving his life on the fallow flood.

Also the brethren,
King and Atheling,
Each in his glory,
Went to his own in his own West-Saxon land,
Glad of the war.

Many a carcase they left to be carrion,
Many a livid one, many a sallow-skin—
Left for the white-tail'd eagle to tear it, and
Left for the horny-nibb'd raven to rend it, and
Gave to the garbaging war-hawk to gorge it, and
That gray beast, the wolf of the weald.

Never had huger
Slaughter of heroes
Slain by the sword-edge—
Such as old writers
Have writ of in histories—
Hapt in this isle, since
Up from the East hither
Saxon and Angle from
Over the broad billow
Broke into Britain with
Haughty war-workers who
Harried the Welshman, when
Earls that were lured by the
Hunger of glory gat
Hold of the land.