– or the picture of the sailing-ship sweeping through the seas from Denmark to Geatland in lines 1905–10 –

tha waes be mæste merehrægla sum, segl sale fæst; sundwudu thunede; no thær wegflotan wind ofer ythum sithes getwæfde; saegenga for, fleat famigheals forth ofer ythe, bundenstefna ofer brimstreamas . . .

– or the fine resounding shout of Beowulf as he calls into the dragon’s cave (lines 2552–3):

stefn in becom heathotorht hlynnan under harne stan.

Sometimes one wants to draw attention, by whatever means can be found without distortion, to a very brief but striking phrase: as, in the Finn episode, when the poet ends his account of the great funeral-fire of the dead warriors with his comment (for both sides), wæs hira blæd scacen (l. 1124), literally ‘their glory was gone’ – gone like the smoke of the pyre, bravery, flos ac robur, youth; or when Wiglaf the eager young warrior goes alone to help the aged Beowulf in his fight with the dragon, wod tha thurh thone wælrec (l. 2661), ‘he went then through the deadly smoke’, as if entering some hell in the proof of fidelity.

It may be a particular atmosphere the translator has to convey, as in the famous description by Hrothgar of the ‘Grendel country’ (lines 1357–76) with its monstrous Patinir-cum-Böcklin desolation and strangeness; or in lines like 3021–7, descriptive of the chilling forethought of an early morning encounter, battle, and death:

Forthon sceall gar wesan monig morgenceald mundum bewunden, hæfen on handa, nalles hearpan sweg wigend weccean, ac se wonna hrefn fus ofer fægum fela reordian, earne secgan, hu him æt æte speow, thenden he with wulf wæl reafode.

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