Book is 160 pp. The official 2nd edition (as opposed to the earlier edition that had been revised to include Old English text) of Alexander's collection of translations of several Old English poems or excerpts from poems. The book's main content is preceded by a general introduction, note on the translation, and a new preface to the 2nd edition (7-23); each selection or group of selections also has its own brief headnote. The book's main content is followed by commentary notes, a series of appendices, a glossary of proper names, and a list of further resources (125-60). Five segments of Beowulf are included: "The Funeral of Scyld Scefing," "Beowulf's Voyage to Denmark," "The Mere," "'The Lay of the Last Survivor,'" and, newly in this edition, "Beowulf's Funeral," which is drawn from Alexander's full 1973 translation; the previous four excerpts from Beowulf are not altered from the original 1966 edition. (A note on p. 23 of the 1985 reprint indicates that for that printing of the 2nd edition, the list of suggested further readings on pp. 158-60 has again been revised.)

The first Beowulf segment, "The Funeral of Scyld Scefing," begins:

At the hour shaped for him Scyld departed,
the many-strengthed moved into his Master's keeping.

They carried him out to the current sea,
his sworn arms-fellows, as he himself had asked
while he wielded by his words, Ward of the Scyldings,
beloved folk-founder; long had he ruled.

A boat with a ringed neck rode in the haven,
icy, out-eager, the aetheling's vessel,
and there they laid out their lord and master,
dealer of wound gold, in the waist of the ship,
in majesty by the mast.
                                   A mound of treasures
from far countries was fetched aboard her,
and it is said that no boat was ever more bravely fitted out
with the weapons of a warrior, war accoutrement,
bills and byrnies; on his breast were set
treasures & trappings to travel with him
on his far faring into the flood's sway. (48)

And the final segment, "Beowulf's Funeral," ends:

Then the warriors rode around the barrow,
twelve of them in all, athelings' sons.
They recited a dirge to declare their grief,
spoke of the man, mourned their King.
They praised his manhood and the prowess of his hands,
they raised his name; it is right a man
should be lavish in honouring his lord and friend,
should love him in his heart when the leading-forth
from the house of flesh befalls him at last.

This was the manner of the mourning of the men of the Geats,
sharers in the feast, at the fall of their lord:
they said that he was of all the world's kings
the gentlest of men, and the most gracious,
the kindest to his people, the keenest for fame. (54)

This revised edition not noted in MO2, where Alexander's 1st edition is MO2 1966(a).

BAM (from 1985 reprint).