And they buried torques in the barrow, and jewels
and a trove of such things as trespassing men
had once dared to drag from the hoard.
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 3163-3168: The poet stresses how useless gold is to men, especially when compared to eternal rewards.