In this sketch, stirring episodes, graphic descriptions, and fine effects are all sacrificed.  The poem itself is a noble one and the English people may well be proud of preserving in it the first epic production of the Teutonic race.

The ‘Fight at Finnsburg’ is a fine fragment of epic cast.  The Finn saga is at least as old as the Beowulf poem, since the gleeman at Hrothgar’s banquet makes it his theme.  From the fragment and the gleeman’s song we perceive that the situation here is much more complex than is usual in Anglo-Saxon poems, and involves a tragic conflict of passion.  Hildeburh’s brother is slain through the treachery of her husband, Finn; her son, partaking of Finn’s faithlessness, falls at the hands of her brother’s men; in a subsequent counterplot, her husband is slain.  Besides the extraordinary vigor of the narrative, the theme has special interest in that a woman is really the central figure, though not treated as a heroine.

A favorite theme in the older lyric poems is the complaint of some wandering scop, driven from his home by the exigencies of those perilous times.  Either the singer has been bereft of his patron by death, or he has been supplanted in his favor by some successful rival; and he passes in sorrowful review his former happiness, and contrasts it with his present misery.  The oldest of these lyrics are of pagan origin, though usually with Christian additions.

In the ‘Wanderer,’ an unknown poet pictures the exile who has fled across the sea from his home.  He is utterly lonely.  He must lock his sorrow in his heart.  In his dream he embraces and kisses his lord, and lays his head upon his knee, as of old.  He awakes, and sees nothing but the gray sea, the snow and hail, and the birds dipping their wings in the waves.  And so he reflects:  the world is full of care; we are all in the hands of Fate.  Then comes the Christian sentiment:  happy is he who seeks comfort with his Father in heaven, with whom alone all things are enduring.

Another fine poem of this class, somewhat similar to the ‘Wanderer,’ is the ‘Seafarer.’  It is, however, distinct in detail and treatment, and has its own peculiar beauty.  In the ‘Fortunes of Men,’ the poet treats the uncertainty of all things earthly, from the point of view of the parent forecasting the ill and the good the future may bring to his sons.  ‘Deor’s Lament’ possesses a genuine lyrical quality of high order.  The singer has been displaced by a rival, and finds consolation in his grief from reciting the woes that others have endured, and reflects in each instance, “That was got over, and so this may be.”  Other poems on other subjects might be noticed here; as ‘The Husband’s Message,’ where the love of husband for wife is the theme, and ‘The Ruin,’ which contains reflections suggested by a ruined city.