Beowulf

Anonymous. Extract from Seamus Heaney’s translation

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by                                                                                                          and the kings that rules them had courage and greatness.                                                                              We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.

…

Afterwards a boy-child was born to Shield,                                                                                                     a cub in the yard, a comfort sent                                                                                                                 by God to that nation. He knew what they had tholed,                                                                                    the long times and troubles they had come through                                                                              without a leader; so the Lord of Life,                                                                                                           the glorious Almighty, made this man renowned.                                                                                     Shield had fathered a famous son:                                                                                                       Beow’s name was known through the north.

 

BBC recording

Seamus Heaney on Beowulf

Happy b-day Ed!!

 

The Clod and the Pebble

William Blake

‘Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.’

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle’s feet;
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these meters meet:

‘Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.’

 

To A Distant Friend

William Wordsworth

Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant
Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air
Of absence withers what was once so fair?
Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant,
Bound to thy service with unceasing care–
The mind’s least generous wish a mendicant
For nought but what thy happiness could spare.

Speak!–though this soft warm heart, once free to hold
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold
Than a forsaken bird’s-nest fill’d with snow
‘Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine–
Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!