Claude Colleer Abbott: 1943 Durham University Journal No XXXV; June 1943 go to: line 62: click "irresistibly" to return I will about myself tell a true story, recount my wanderings, how in weary days seasons of sorrow oft I endured. Bitter the anguish I have confronted, many disasters, fierce welter of waters, suffered on ship. Oft-times at the stern narrow the watch that night has enforced when the boat knocked the cliffs. Benumbed with cold were my feet with frost stiffened in chill fetters, while sorrow sighed hot round my heart and hunger within tore my spirit sea-weary. That man cannot know whom fairest fortune has favoured on land how I worn with trouble in paths of exile weathered the winters on the ice-cold sea forlorn of dear comrades, cumbered with icicles; hail drove in showers. Nothing I heard there save the sea roaring, the icy waves, though at times for merriment had I the swan's call, the cry of the gannet and shriek of the scammel for laughter of men, the moan of the mew for the mead drinking. Storms beat on the stone cliffs, the icy-winged tern threw them back answer, the eagle wet-feathered screamed them reply. Not one of my kin could cheer and protect my desolate heart.
Scarce will he believe who bideth in courts, who proud and wine-flushed has joy of life and few baleful journeys, how I suffer forlorn in voyaging ever over the sea. Night shadows lowered, snow fell from the north, frost fettered the land, hail fell on the earth that coldest of grain. the deep waters, the tumult of waves. Now and always desire is urging my heart to wander and seek out the land of strange peoples far away hence. Verily no man on earth is so lofty in mind nor so free of his gifts nor so strong in youth nor in deeds so daring, so firm in lord's favour but that on his seafaring ever is fearful how may befall him the purpose of God. No heart has he for harp or ring-giving, no pleasure in woman, delight in the world, nor of any whit else save the welter of waves; he always has longing who goes down to the sea. Groves burst into blossom, townships grow fair, the meadows are shining, mankind is bestirred. All these things hurry him who thus hankers, the mind of high spirit, eager to wander, over the flood ways, to journey afar. Likewise the cuckoo, the warden of summer, with sad call urges, harshly foreboding bitter trials to his heart. He knows of this nothing, the prosperous man, what some of those suffer for whom stretch widest the ways of exile. along the ocean my spirit sweepeth over the whale's haunt, over the vast expanse of the world. Again it returns to me; hungry and eager screams the lone flier, irresistibly urging my heart to adventure the face of the waters. Now fiercer to me are the joys of the Lord than this dead life fleeting on land. I do not believe that the blessings of earth will always endure. No matter the man it will ever be doubtful, ere time of fulfilment, which thing of the three --- sickness or eld or peril of sword ---
shall sever the life of him doomed to depart. The fairest of fames for every warrior is the praise of the living, of those who speak after --- that he should succeed ere he go hence, prevail on earth against malice of fiends, with daring deeds confronting the devil, so that the sons of men praise him hereafter and his renown shall endure with the angels for ever --- the glory of life everlasting bliss with the righteous. there are now no kings nor emperors nor gold-givers as once there were, when they excelled their peers in glory and in the lordliest splendour lived. All this chivalry, these joys are fallen; a weaker race lingers this world to inherit living by toil. Laid low is the glory, earth's nobility grows old and withered as now is each man throughout the world. Age marches on him, his face grows pallid, grey-haired he grieves remembering old friends, the sons of princes given to the earth. Now can the body, while his spirit ebbeth, neither taste the sweet, nor suffer a sorrow, nor rear a hand, nor think with the brain. Though he as a brother for his born brother strew the grave with gold, bury by the dead what various treasure he wish to have with him, yet gold that he hideth while he is living nought can avail the soul which is sinful in place of the fear the terror of God .......... In this version of what is perhaps the best-known of the Old English Elegies an attempt is made to suggest the cadence and stressed alliterative metre of the original. The last 22 lines, possibly a later and certainly a platitudinous addition, are omitted. [PP 6118 n] |