Record no. 586. How do I cite this entry?

Beowulf: Verse

  • Genre/Type Descriptor(s)
    Translation from Old English
     
    Language(s)
    English
  • Translator
    Gummere, Francis B.
  • Contained in
    Beowulf, by Francis Burton Gummere and Clarence Griffin Child
    Location Details
    Pages 1-90
    City
    Ann Arbor
    Publisher
    Borders Classics
    Date
    2007
  • Relationships
    (Upstream) Reproduces in new context -> Beowulf, Gummere, Francis B. (2005)
  • Identifying Numbers
    ISBN: 9781587264801
     
    Descriptive Notes

    Book is v + 162 pp. A pairing of two out-of-copyright translations of Beowulf: in verse, by Gummere (first published 1909), and in prose, by Clarence Griffin Child (first published 1904). Borders Classics had previously printed Gummere's translation in the anthology Medieval Epics and Sagas in 2005, from which this text is presumably taken.

    The Gummere text begins:

    Lo! praise of the prowess of people-kings
    of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
    we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
    Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
    from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
    awing the earls. Since erst he lay
    friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
    for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
    till before him the folk, both far and near,
    who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
    gave him gifts: a good king he! (3)

    And ends:

    Then about that barrow the battle-keen rode,
    atheling-born, a band of twelve,
    lament to make, to mourn their king,
    chant their dirge, and their chieftain honor.
    They praised his earlship, his acts of prowess
    worthily witnessed: and well it is
    that men their master-friend mightily laud,
    heartily love, when hence he goes
    from life in the body forlorn away.
    Thus made their mourning the men of Geatland,
    for their hero's passing his hearth-companions:
    quoth that of all the kings of earth,
    of men he was mildest and most beloved,
    to his kin the kindest, keenest for praise. (90)

     
    Authentication

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  • Last Updated
    03/30/2022