Beowulf is an epic poem written somewhere between 750-1000 A.D. Exact year
             is not known because the poem was anonymously written but from what
             historians have learned from style of writing and language suggest that it
             was written during or after seventh century. The language is a form of
             England that is almost impossible to understand today and for this reason
             readers usually rely on translations of the work. The language which is
             called Old English or Anglo Saxon however has been used skillfully and
             creatively to depict various themes in the true poetic style of those days.
             Commenting on the language of the poem, critic Heaney Seamus (2000) writes:
             "The fact that the English language has changed so much in the last
             thousand years means, however, that the poem is now generally read in
             translation and mostly in English courses at schools and universities. This
             has contributed to the impression that it was written (as Osip Mandelstam
             said of The Divine Comedy) "on official paper," which is unfortunate, since
             what we are dealing with is a work of the greatest imaginative vitality, a
             masterpiece where the structuring of the tale is a elaborate as the
             beautiful contrivances of its language. Its narrative elements may belong
             to a previous age but as a work of art it lives in its own continuous
             present, equal to our knowledge of reality in the present time."
             Surprisingly, while the language itself was old, the poetic descriptions
             are thoroughly modern. In one scene near the end of the poem, a Geat woman
             loudly mourns the death of her beloved hero, Beowulf and the scene is
             described in such a way that it appears to be coming from straight from
             some modern poet or writer. This aspect of the poem is responsible for
             keeping it fresh and young and modern readers can thus relate to it quite
             easily. In this particular scene, it is so easy for a modern reader to
             On a height they kindled the hugest o...