{ 11 } but though with sympathy and patience we might gather , from a line here or a tone there , the background of imagination which gives to this indomitability , this paradox of defeat inevitable yet unacknowledged , its full significance , it is in beowulf that a poet has devoted a whole poem to the theme , and has drawn the struggle in different proportions , so that we may see man at war with the hostile world , and his inevitable overthrow in time .