The stability of Old English poetic convention over a long period of time is evident in different aspects of the style of the poetry which have been considered in the previous chapters: the ubiquitous presence of archaic treasure, the carefully maintained semantic distinctions which differentiate the lexis of treasure, the complexity of the formulaic nature of the verse, and the place of verbal repetition within poems. Each one of these features contributes to an aesthetics marked by its preference – drive even – for the familiar and by a capacity to make the new quickly familiar. The interaction of these features, however, could also make the familiar startlingly new, illustrating that the familiar should not be understood as conventional, in our modern, pejorative understanding of this word. Looking at conventions associated with treasure across the Old English corpus did not impose a homogeneity on the verse. Rather a striking stylistic variety emerged in poems, such as Beowulf, Guthlac B, The Riddles, The Phoenix, Genesis A and The Paris Psalter, which nonetheless remain tightly connected by shared convention. The fineness of poetic convention, which cannot be reduced to the simple reiteration of prefabricated half-lines, coupled with this stylistic diversity, underscores that tradition was deployed and maintained with awareness and purposefulness. The richness of Old English poetic convention thus brings us to the importance of people and poets, as well as audiences, in maintaining the distinctive unity of Old English poetic form and content.