A creature that has haunted the darkness for twelve winters, descending nightly on a mead-hall to tear men apart and drag them screaming into the mere, meets at last an adversary who fights without weapons, trusting only the strength of his grip. Composed in Old English sometime around the eighth or ninth century, Beowulf is the earliest major poem in the language that would become English, and it is already preoccupied with endings. The hero defeats Grendel, then Grendel's mother, then reigns wisely for fifty years before facing the dragon that will kill him. Every triumph is shadowed by elegy. The poet sings of glory but means transience, and the funeral pyre at the poem's close illuminates a world that knows its brightness cannot last.