_blendan_, "to blend"), which conveys the idea of the companionship of
the oar with the sea. From this compound, modern poets have borrowed
their "oar-disturbéd sea," "oaréd sea," "oar-blending sea," and
"oar-wedded sea." The Anglo-Saxon poets call the sun rising or setting
in the sea the _mere-candel_. In Beowulf, _mere-str=aeta_,
"sea-streets," are spoken of as if they were the easily traversed
avenues of a town.

Figures of Rhetoric.--A special characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry
is the rarity of similes. In Homer they are frequent, but Anglo-Saxon
verse is too abrupt and rapid in the succession of images to employ
the expanded simile. The long poem of _Beowulf_ contains only five
similes, and these are of the shorter kind. Two of them, the
comparison of the light in Grendel's dwelling to the beams of the sun,
and of a vessel to a flying bird, have been given in the original
Anglo-Saxon on pages 16, 17. Other similes compare the light from
Grendel's eyes to a flame, and the nails on his fingers to steel:
while the most complete simile says that the sword, when bathed in the
monster's poisonous blood, melted like ice.

On the other hand, this poetry uses many direct and forcible
metaphors, such as "wave-ropes" for ice, the "whale-road" or
"swan-road" for the sea, the "foamy-necked floater" for a ship, the
"war-adder" for an arrow, the "bone-house" for the body. The sword is
said to sing a war song, the slain to be put to sleep with the sword,
the sun to be a candle, the flood to boil. War is appropriately called
the sword-game.

Parallelisms.--The repetition of the same ideas in slightly
differing form, known as parallelism, is frequent. The author, wishing