To the Anglo-Saxon poet, much that we call metaphorical was scarcely more than literal statement.  As the object pictured itself to his responsive imagination, he expressed it with what was to him a direct realism.  His lines are filled with a profusion of metaphors of every degree of effectiveness.  To him the sea was “the water-street,” “the swan-path,” “the strife of the waves,” “the whale-path”; the ship was “the foamy-necked floater,” “the wave-farer,” “the sea-wood,” “the sea-horse”; the arrow was “the battle adder”; the battle was “spear-play,” “sword-play”; the prince was “the ring-giver,” “the gold-friend”; the throne was “the gift-stool”; the body, “the bone-house”; the mind, “the breast-hoard.”

Indeed, as it has been pointed out by many writers, the metaphor is almost the only figure of the Anglo-Saxon poetry.  The more developed simile belongs to a riper and more reflective culture, and is exceedingly rare in this early native product.  It has been noted that ‘Beowulf,’ a poem of three thousand one hundred and eighty-four lines, contains only four or five simple similes, and only one that is fully carried out.  “The ship glides away likest to a bird,” “The monster’s eyes gleam like fire,” are simple examples cited by Ten Brink, who gives also the elaborate one, “The sword-hilt melted, likened to ice, when the Father looseneth the chain of frost, and unwindeth the wave-ropes.”  But even this simile is almost obliterated by the crowding metaphors.

Intensity, an almost abrupt directness, a lack of explanatory detail, are more general characteristics, though in greatly varying degrees.  As some critic has well said, the Anglo-Saxon poet seems to presuppose a knowledge of his subject-matter by those he addresses.  Such a style is capable of great swiftness of movement, and is well suited to rapid description and narrative; but at times roughness or meagreness results.

The prevailing tone is one of sadness.  In the lyric poetry, this is so decided that all the Anglo-Saxon lyrics have been called elegies.  This note seems to be the echo of the struggle with an inhospitable climate, dreary with rain, ice, hail, and snow; and of the uncertainties of life, and the certainty of death.  Suffering was never far off, and everything was in the hands of Fate.  This is true at least of the earlier poetry, and the note is rarely absent even in the Christian lyrics.  A more cheerful strain is sometimes heard, as in the ‘Riddles,’ but it is rather the exception; and any alleged humor is scarcely more than a suspicion.  Love and sentiment, in the modern sense, are not made the subject of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and this must mean that they did not enter into the Anglo-Saxon life with the same intensity as into modern life.  The absence of this beautiful motive has, to some degree, its compensation in the exceeding moral purity of the whole literature.  It is doubtful whether it has its equal in this respect.