xxxviii + 94 pp. A verse translation by a very notable poet. The book contains substantial introductory essays on "The Translator's Task in Beowulf" (vii-xxvii) and "The Art of the Poem" (xxviii-xxxvi), as well as a list of prior English translations (94). First issued in a limited edition of 2000 copies, Morgan's translation was reprinted New York, 1953; Berkeley and Los Angeles, U. of California P., 1962 and several times thereafter; and Manchester, Carcanet, 2002 and 2012. In 1980 a deluxe illustrated edition, with 10 pictures by George Knowlton, was issued in a limited run of 1000, and in 1981 Morgan's text contributed to the script of Julian Glover's one-man theatrical performance (see Relationships, above).

Later in life, as Poet Laureate of Scotland, Morgan wrote: "At thirty I thought life had passed me by, / translated Beowulf for want of love" ("Epilogue: Seven Decades," in Edwin Morgan: Collected Poems [Manchester: Carcanet, 1990], 594).

The translation begins:

How that glory remains in remembrance,
Of the Danes and their kings in days gone,
The acts and valour of princes of their blood!
Scyld Scefing: how often he thrust from their feast-halls
The troops of his enemies, tribe after tribe,
Terrifying their warriors: he who had been found
Long since as a waif and awaited his desert
While he grew up and throve in honour among men
Till all the nations neighbouring about him
Sent as his subjects over the whale-fields
Their gifts of tribute: king worth the name! (1)

And ends:

The men of the Geats, the sharers of his hearth,
Mourned thus aloud for the fall of their lord;
They said he had proved of all kings of the world
The kindest of men and the most humane,
Most gentle to his folk, most vigilant of fame. (87)

• Chris Jones, Strange Likeness: The Use of Old English in Twentieth-Century Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 3, “Edwin Morgan: Dredging the Whale-Roads” (pp. 122–81).

• Hugh Magennis, "Translating Beowulf: Edwin Morgan and Seamus Heaney," in Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry, ed. Peter Mackay, Edna Longley, and Fran Brearton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 147-60.

• Hugh Magennis, Translating Beowulf: Modern Versions in English Verse (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011).

BAM.