The Battle of Maldon

“The Battle of Maldon” is a 325-line fragment of a longer work, with the beginning and end missing. Described by the Norton Anthology of English Literature as a “short heroic lay” (74), or a narrative or lyric poem, “The Battle of Maldon” can also be identified as an epic poem. The poem consists of a number of stanzas of varying line lengths. There does not appear to be a pattern or repeated structure of line lengths or stanza lengths. Also, depending on the translation of the poem, the stanza and line lengths vary. The version of the poem discussed here, does not feature any metrical pattern, rhyme scheme, or stanza structure. In this translation, there is no set number of stressed or unstressed beats per line.

However, there is a specific structure in the Old English version of the poem, the language in which the poem was originally written. Old English poems often featured lines with a caesura, or a mid-line break or pause “often marked by punctuation or by a grammatical boundary, such as a phrase or clause” (“Caesura.” Poetry Foundation, 2022).