x + 84 pp. + 6 unnumbered plates with color illustrations by author. A posthumous publication of this verse translation, with a short prefatory note by the author's mother. The text is arranged loosely into rhyming quatrains, but rhyme is not strict or continuous. There are 8 color illustrations, mostly captioned, as follows: on the front of the dust jacket (untitled, presumably the funeral of Scyld), frontispiece ("Beowulf's Journey"), opposite p. 23 ("Grendel Watching"), opposite p. 39 ("Grendel Enters"), opposite p. 47 ("Beowulf's Grip"), opposite p. 55 ("The Journey to the Pool"), opposite p. 71 ("The Fight with Grendel's Mother"), and opposite p. 78 ("The Wait for Beowulf"). Reprinted 1955.

From the dust jacket copy:

If it seems irrelevant at the present time to attempt to reproduce as an English poem such curious and far-away interests as are enshrined in the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf, there seems, nevertheless, good reason to believe, that by no generation of readers can the story of Beowulf be so readily received and understood as by the readers of today … If there are no monsters to-day, for heroes to sail overseas to fight, never in the history of the world have such monstrous growths of evil arisen; never have heroes set sail with such weight and purpose to break the oppressor's hate, and never have so many tortured peoples raised their heads with rejoicing to hear, "God's enemy roaring a song of loss and sting."

From the Preface by "G. H. B." (his mother, Gertrude Helena Bone): "this is not in any sense a philological translation … the rendering is very free" (v). "Perhaps the clue to a translation so idiosyncratic is best sought in the author's own pictorial illustrations to the poem. In them the free vigour and freshness of the drawing display clearly the impulsive imagination with which he explored the whole world of Beowulf" (v). "Neither poem nor prose introduction were finally revised by the author, and his series of illustrations were never completed. He died in 1942" (vi). (In her Preface to Bone's Anglo-Saxon Poetry: An Essay with Specimen Translations in Verse [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1943], p. 5, Gertrude Helena Bone indicates that the introduction to the not-yet-published Beowulf volume was to have formed a chapter of a larger work her son had planned on Old English poetry.)

From Gavin Bone's note on the text: "The following lines of the original have been omitted in this version: 83-85; 313-319; 349-50; 353-55; 395-99; 898-924; 930-945; 957-979; 1148-1151; 1166-1231; 1836-1839; 1845-1854 (condensed); 1863-1869; 1900-1903; 1927-1962; 1968; 1970-1974; 2026-2073; 2145; 2166-2176; 2221-2232 (some of these lines are illegible in the MS.); 2282-2286; 2363-2366; 2375-2396; 2472-2509; 2525-2537; 2910-3009; 3087-3093" (vii). From his Introduction:

As one reads, one grows accustomed to [a] curious trick [of the poet]. For some time, something is going to happen. For some time, something has happened, and the poet is in reminiscent mood. But as for the point when something is happening, that is extremely hard to lay one's finger on. (1)

If the poem is rarely distinguished as narrative, it is often great as description … There are such scenes as the burial of Scyld, and the icy boat mysteriously rapt away … Then there is the speech of Wiglaf … an appeal to a little band of brothers.…Finally, there is great poetry in the description of the lair of Grendel—the horrible dripping weather that goes with bogs. This bog is like modern bogs except that it is exciting. (3)

On the whole … this is an unprincipled translation—or to put it differently, a tactful translation. It tries to adjust itself to the modern reader, and feels uncomfortable at some of the things he is asked to swallow in other translations.… I have omitted the opening 'Hwaet' of the poem, which really means 'stay, listen,' because I cannot think of a translation.… A good many lines of historical matter have been omitted from the poem.… A drastic change I have made is to alter the position of some lines in the Minstrel's story.… My arrangement, which is completely without authority, makes the story clearer. (13)

The translation begins (with marginal sidenote "Early history of the Danes (also called Scyldings from their first King Scyld)"):

WE

HAVE HEARD THE SPEAR-DANE'S POWER, THE FORCE, IN DAYS GONE, OF THEIR KINGS—THE ACTS OF COURAGE DONE OF PRINCES!

                                              Scyld struck on
(Child of Scef) at troops come for attack,—
He plucked their halls of mead from many a clan,
And made men fear. From wretchedness, far back,
A foundling taken,—now his turn began:
He grew great under the heavens, waxing still to wonder,
Till every people that is on the ring
Of waters, must obey, and yield him plunder
On the tract of whales. That was a good king! (15)

And ends:

Then, out of them all, the princes rode their way
Round the barrow, valiant, twelve,
To speak their sorrow, for the king to cry,
Get out their story in words, and say something of the man himself.
They weighed his manhood, his work of dauntlessness
Doughtily praised, as it is only right
That a thane should praise his master and bless
And love him in heart, when forth out of the light
He must pass the body. The noble Geats then,
His hearth-companions, grudged and mourned his state:
They said that he was the king mildest to men,
The kindest, the pleasantest to his people,—and the eagerest to be great. (84)

Fry and MO1 interpret the title page text "in modern verse with an essay and pictures" as part of the book's title. GR and MO2 interpret "in modern verse" as part of the book's title. The typographical hierarchy and arrangement leave it ambiguous whether this description should be seen as part of the title, but either none of it or all of it must; there is no distinction between "in modern verse" and "with an essay and pictures."

BAM.