No More Grendel

“Yet rather had I wished that thou might see him here. Grendel himself, thy foe in his array sick unto death! I purposed in hard bonds swiftly to bind him upon his deathbed, that by the grasp of my hands he should be forced to lie struggling for life, had not his body escaped me. I might not, since it was not the will of God, restrain his flight; I did not cleave fast enough for that unto my mortal foe; too overwhelming was the might of that fiend in body’s movement. Nonetheless he hath left behind upon his trail his hand and arm and shoulder. Yet in no wise thus hath that unhappy one purchased himself relief; none the longer will he live, that doer of evil wrong, burdened by his sins; nay, pain hath him closely gripped in a grasp he cannot flee, in bonds of anguish — there must he, stained with sin, await the great Day of Doom and the sentence that the bright Judge will pronounce on him” (J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, 40).