Longfellow's Poetry and Poets of Europe is xix + 779 pp., in 2 vols. paginated continuously. The chapter "Poem of Beowulf," the first set of literary extracts in the book, occupies pp. 8-10 and consists of 5 individually titled passages in verse translation, given in this order: "Beowulf the Shyld" and "The Sailing of Beowulf," both from William Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry: Interspersed with Various Translations (1828); "Beowulf's Expedition to Heort," by Longfellow; and "An Old Man's Sorrow" and "Good Night," both from John M. Kemble's 1837 translation. Longfellow editorially recasts Kemble's two contributions as verse. The 5 extracts respectively translate ll. 53-82, 18-40a, 189-257, 2455-62a, and 1789b-803a.

"Good Night" (a rendering of ll. 1789b-803a, from Kemble's Beowulf, p. 73) reads in full:

The night-helm grew dusky,
Dark over the vassals;
The court all rose,
The mingled-haired
Old Scylding
Would visit his bed;
The Geát wished the
Renowned Warrior to rest
Immeasurably well.
Soon him the foreigner,
Weary of his journey,
The hall-thane guided forth,
Who, after a fitting manner,
Provided all that
The thane needed,
Whatsoever that day
The sailers over the deep
Should have.
The magnanimous warrior rested;
The house rose aloft
Curved and variegated with gold;
The stranger slept therein,
Until the pale raven,
Blithe of heart,
Announced the joy of heaven,
The bright sun, to be come (10; "sailers" and lack of final punctuation sic)

In the course of rendering Kemble's prose as verse, Longfellow introduces many changes of punctuation. In this passage, Kemble's original translation (with his italics for elements not directly expressed in the Old English) had read:

The night-helm grew dusky, dark over the vassals; the court all rose; the mingled-haired old Scylding would visit his bed; the Geát wished the renowned warrior to rest immeasurably well; soon him, the foreigner, weary of his journey, the hall-thane guided forth, who after a fitting manner, provided all that the thane needed, whatsoever that day the sailors over the deep should have. The magnanimous warrior rested, the house rose aloft, curved and variegated with gold; the stranger slept therein until the pale raven blithe of heart announced the joy of heaven, the bright sun to be come. (73, quoted here from Kemble, A Translation of the Anglo-Saxon Poem of Beowulf [London: William Pickering, 1837], viewed in digital facsimile via hathitrust.org)

Fry, MO1, and MO2 misattribute to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow this translation by Kemble. Longfellow's Table of Contents in The Poets and Poetry of Europe indicates the correct attribution.

Fry, MO1, and GR represent the whole portion of Longfellow's anthology The Poets and Poetry of Europe (1845) that contains this translation as a reprint of an 1838 review article. However, this 1845 work uses a greatly reduced verson of the 1838 article as an introductory chapter, giving it the new title "Anglo-Saxon Language and Poetry" (vol. 1, pp. 1-7). This is followed by a series of titled anthology sections containing translated material mostly by others, including 5 passages from Beowulf in a section entitled "Poem of Beowulf" (vol. 1, pp. 8-10). Kemble's translation "Good Night," which is one of these, was not present in Longfellow's 1838 review article.

BAM.