Devon) four weeks ere Ælfred king.

During the Augustan age the Chronicle grows less full, but contains
several fine war-songs, of the genuine old English type, full of
savagery in sentiment, and abrupt or broken in manner, but marked by the
same wild poetry and harsh inversions as the older heathen ballads.
Amongst them stand the lines on the fight of Brunanburh, whose exordium
is quoted above. Its close forms one of the finest passages in old
English verse:–

Behind them they Left, the Lych to devour,
The Sallow kite and the Swart raven,
Horny of beak,– and Him, the dusk-coated,
The white-afted Erne, the corse to Enjoy,
The Greedy war-hawk, and that Grey beast,
The Wolf of the Wood. No such Woeful slaughter
Aye on this Island Ever hath been,
By edge of the Sword, as book Sayeth,
Writers of Eld, since of Eastward hither
English and Saxons Sailed over Sea,
O'er the Broad Brine,– landed in Britain,
Proud Workers of War, and o'ercame the Welsh,
Earls Eager of fame, Obtaining this Earth.

During the decadence, in the disastrous reign of Æthelred, the Chronicle
regains its fulness, and the following passage may be taken as a good
specimen of its later style. It shows the approach to comment and
reflection, as the compilers grew more accustomed to historical writing
in their own tongue:–