“ALAS, bright cup! Alas, mail-clad warrior! Alas, chieftain’s boast! How that day hath gone by, dark under night’s helm, as though it had never been!
“There, where once stood dear friends in the flower of manhood, now standeth a wall, wonderfully high, adorned with serpent shapes;* the earls were wasted by the hosts of ash-spears, weapons greedy for slaughter. Theirs was an honourable fate. And storms batter these sheer stones, icy blasts swirl about them; earth is fast bound in the tumult of winter. Then cometh the dark, the shadows of night deepen, calling lashing hail from the north in malice against brave men.
“All is hardship in this earthly realm; the decrees of destiny change the world beneath the heavens. Here wealth is but borrowed, here friend is borrowed, here man is borrowed, here kinsman is borrowed. All earth’s frame cometh to nought.”
Thus spake the wise man within his breast, as he sat apart in counsel.
Translated from the Old English
Based on ‘The Exeter Book’, edited with a translation by Israel Gollancz. With acknowledgements to ‘The Wanderer’ text and literal translation, at AngloSaxon.net; and The Earliest English Poems (1966) by Michael Alexander.
Presumably a wide and tall stone cross carved with the twisted shapes of their kind, and brightly coloured. A well-known survivor is the Middleton cross.