The first grim stirrings of springtime come (as I knew they must, having seen the ram), and even under the ground where I live, where no light breaks but the red of my fires and nothing stirs but the flickering shadows on my wet rock walls, or scampering rats on my piles of bones, or my mother's fat, foul bulk rolling over, restless again--molested by nightmares, old memories--I am aware in my chest of tuberstirrings in the blacksweet duff of the forest overhead. I feel my anger coming back, building up like invisible fire, and at last, when my soul can no longer resist, I go up--as mechanical as anything else--fists clenched against my lack of will, my belly growling, mindless as wind, for blood. I swim up through the firesnakes, hot dark whalecocks prowling the luminous green of the mere, and I surface with a gulp among churning waves and smoke. I crawl up onto the bank and catch my breath.

Reading Grendel again, it occurs to me that I can't positively identify any romance language words in the text. I've gotten spoiled by Kindle lately, with 35% of my reading this year in e-book format, and miss being able to look up a word origin with a couple of taps.

Resplendent — no — wonderful as Gardner's language is, it is not as pure as Poul Anderson's contrived yet readable text. Die freie Enzyklopädie mentions a few exceptions, and also gets in a use of the über-English term word-hoard.

Edit: repost after I_-_I