The website you've url'ed seems not to be working today.
But you've reminded me, David, of Michael Alexander's magnificent
translations; and in particular "The Dream of The Rood", in, as he explains,
the well known 'riddle' form of "I saw" and "I am"---the subject's name to
be riddled out; and the subject itself 'speaking', as well.
This can be got at Google Books for Michael Alexander's *The Earliest
English Poems* [very recently reissued, retitled to *The First English
Poems*, with translations unchanged, the rest revised].
Since Google Books texts cannot be cut and pasted into an email message,
I'll type out the first many lines. They recall to me Alexander's
poet-power, as well as the sounds and forms I love the very most in poetry:
The Dream of The Rood
"Hwaet!
A dream came to me
at deep midnight
when humankind
kept to their beds
----the dream of dreams!
I shall declare it.
It seemed I saw the Tree itself
borne on the air, light wound about it
----a beam of brightest wood, a beacon clad
in overlapping gold, glancing gems
fair at its foot, and five stones
set in a crux flashed from the crosstree.
Around angels of God
all gazed upon it,
since first fashioned fair.
It was not a felon's gallow,
for holy ghosts beheld it there,
and man on mould, and the whole making shone for it
-----signum of victory!
Stained and marred,
stricken with shame, I saw the glory-tree
shone out gaily, sheathed in yellow
decorous gold; and gemstones made
for their Maker's Tree a right mail-coat."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh glorious stuff!! says Judy
2009/6/19 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>
> By the Dorsetshire monk Aelfric:
>
> *8* Eft ða ða God com, ond hi gehyrdon his stemne ðær he eode on
> neorxnawange ofer midne dæg, ða behydde Adam hine, ond his wif eac swa
> dyde,
> fram Godes gesihðe on middam ðam treowe neorxnanwonges. *9* God clypode ða
> Adam, ond cwæð "Adam, hwær eart ðu?"
> or
>
> *20* Ða gesceop Adam naman his wife, Eua, ðæt is lif, for ðan ðe heo is
> ealra libbendra modor.
>
> As this is Etc for those who don't know it , or do, the beautifully homely
> late Anglo-Saxon translation of Genesis is available at:
> http://wordhord.org/nasb/
>
>
>
> --
> David Bircumshaw
> "Nothing can be done in the face
> of ordinary unhappiness" - PP
> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>
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