He had shimmered forth
on the night air once, then winged back
down to his den; but death owned him now,
he would never enter his earth-gallery again.
Beside him stood pitchers and piled-up dishes,
silent flagons, precious swords
eaten through with rust, ranged as they had been
while they waited their thousand winters under ground…
They let the ground keep that ancestral treasure,
gold under gravel, gone to earth,
as useless to men now as it ever was.
– Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (trans.)
Lines 3043-3068: Narrator speaks about the dragon and his treasure, now lying rusted and corroded and useless now that the dragon is dead.