The Seafarer (poem)

"The Seafarer" is an anonymous Old English elegiac poem on the cares of the mariner's life. It dates from the 8th or 9th century.

Quotes

The translations used here are by Michael Alexander, and are taken from his The Earliest English Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).

• Þæt se beorn ne wat,
  sefteadig secg,      hwæt þa sume dreogað
  þe þa wræclastas      widost lecgað.
  • Blithe heart cannot know,
    Through its happiness, what hardships they suffer
    Who drive the foam-furrow furthest from land.
  • Line 55

• Simle þreora sum      þinga gehwylce
  ær his tiddege      to tweon weorþeð:
  adl oþþe yldo      oþþe ecghete
  fægum fromweardum      feorh oðþringeð.
  • Three things all ways threaten a man's peace
    And one before the end shall overthrow his mind;
    Either illness or age or the edge of vengeance
    Shall draw out the breath from the doom-shadowed.
  • Line 68

• Nearon nu cyningas      ne caseras
  ne goldgiefan      swylce iu wæron,
  þonne hi mæst mid him      mærþa gefremedon
  ond on dryhtlicestum      dome lifdon.
  • Kings are not now, kaisers are not,
    There are no gold-givers like the gone masters
    Who between them framed the first deeds in the world,
    In their lives lordly, in the lays renowned.
  • Line 82

External links

• Ezra Pound's free translation of The Seafarer.
• J. Duncan Spaeth's translation of part of The Seafarer.
• The Seafarer in the original Old English. The Seafarer. Verse Indeterminate Saxon.