[Critical edition: Sedgefield, The Battle of Maldon and Six Short Poems from the Saxon Chronicle, Boston, 1904, Belles Lettres Edition.
Date: It appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 991.
“The Battle of Maldon treats not of legendary heroes of the Germanic races but of an actual historic personage, an English hero and patriot fallen in battle against a foreign invader a very short time before the poem was made. A single event in contemporary history is here described with hardly suppressed emotion by one who knew his hero and loved him. There is none of the allusiveness and excursiveness of the Beowulf; we have here not a member of an epic cycle, but an independent song. Very striking is the absence of ornament from the Battle of Maldon; all is plain, blunt, and stern.”—Sedgefield, The Battle of Maldon, pp. vi-vii.]
. . . . . . . . . . was broken;
He bade the young barons abandon their horses,
To drive them afar and dash quickly forth,
In their hands and brave heart to put all hope of success.
5 The [kinsman of Offa] discovered then first
That the earl would not brook dishonorable bearing.
He held in his hand [the hawk] that he loved,