to make certain ideas emphatic, repeated them with varying
phraseology. As the first sight of land is important to the sailor,
the poet used four different terms for the shore that met Beowulf's
eyes on his voyage to Hrothgar: _land, brimclifu, beorgas,
saen=aessas_ (land, sea-cliffs, mountains, promontories).

This passage from the _Phoenix_ shows how repetition emphasizes the
absence of disagreeable things:--

"...there may neither snow nor rain,
Nor the furious air of frost, nor the flare of fire,
Nor the headlong squall of hail, nor the hoar frost's fall,
Nor the burning of the sun, nor the bitter cold,
Nor the weather over-warm, nor the winter shower,
Do their wrong to any wight."[27]

The general absence of cold is here made emphatic by mentioning
special cold things: "snow," "frost," "hail," "hoar frost," "bitter
cold," "winter shower." The absence of heat is emphasized in the same
way.

Saxon contrasted with Celtic Imagery.--A critic rightly says: "The
gay wit of the Celt would pour into the song of a few minutes more
phrases of ornament than are to be found in the whole poem of
_Beowulf_." In three lines of an old Celtic death song, we find three
similes:--

"Black as the raven was his brow;
Sharp as a razor was his spear;
White as lime was his skin."