The Balance of Joy and Sorrow in BeowulfThe poet Richard Wilbur expresses in his poem Beowulf one of the many sorrows expressed by the Beowulf's original poem: "Such gifts as are the hero's hard reward...Those things he stored away under his parting sail, and mourned that he might share them without a son" (Wilbur 67). The hero's lament at not having an heir is just one of dozens of sorrows in this classic poetry, which is balanced with numerous joys expressed on alternating pages. This essay expresses only a selection of joys and sorrows from the almost innumerable number existing in the poem. Beowulf begins and ends on the painful occasion of a death, that of the Danish king Scyld Scefing in the first lines and that of our hero in the last lines. . This fact is important in some critics' classification of the poem as an elegy rather than an epic: “It is a heroic-elegaic poem; and in a sense, all its first 3136 lines are the prelude to a dirge: [Then the Geatish people prepared a pyre on the earth]: one of the most moving ever written” (Tolkien 38). Hrothgar, Scyld's great-grandson, introduces the first full measure of joy in the poem by (1) being a king “loved by his people; and (2) with his construction of a huge and splendid hall called Heorot, where he could "share among young and old all that God had given him..." In the hall "each new day" one "heard joyful laughter out loud in the room. room, the sound of the harp, the melodious singing, the clear singing of the scop. And an even deeper spiritual joy was present in the room as listeners learned “how the Almighty had created the earth, this bright and shining plain surrounded by the waters.” Thanks to the hall, “the brave warriors lived...... middle of paper ......elly” – a positive point. The demise of Beowulf, the punishment of the cowardly fighters, the prophecy that the Geatas would be the objects of hostility from various kingdoms, the mourning – can all this sadness be counterbalanced by: They said he was, of the kings of this world, the kindest to his men, the most courteous man, the best to his people and the most eager for glory. This famous and enduring poem is therefore considered a balance of joys and sorrows from beginning to end. BIBLIOGRAPHY Chickering, Howell D.. Beowulf A Bilingual edition. New York: Anchor Books, 1977. Tolkien, JRR. “Beowulf: Monsters and Critics.” » In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Wilbur, Richard. “Beowulf.” In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc..., 1968.