A N O N Y M O U S
_____________________________________POEMS IN OLD ENGLISH
Translated by Eleanor Johnson
The Ruin
Splendid is that spoiled space
broken by fate:
burst burgspires, bruised work of giants.
Roofs are ruined, turrets riveted.
Gate-rungs gape, greyed with frost.
A sure city is shredded, scored, scourged,
all eaten-under by age. Earth-grip has
enwrapped her rulers, the wisemen, the learned.
The hard clasp of earth. While a hundred ages
of people have passed along, this path,
moss-hoary and red-goared, endured one rule after another.
It has withstood storm, but the steep wall has fallenThey dwell yet that heaped up
Fell on grim ground.
She shone
Pride in earlier going
Bowed to borders
Mind more
Braided with swiftling
Whithered in rings, bound the high roof.
Wiry battle walls wound together.
Bright burgridges, brilliant chambers,
Horns strewn high above the whole heap of men,
Many meadhalls full of mirths
Until that weird fate went her wild way.
Death drank deeply. There came diseases.
She took those battle braves all away,
The war halls were then wasted places,
The town tumbled, the tinkers fell.
Armies, earthbound
Thus, this haven heaves open,
its royal roof sheds red tiles:
the curving ceiling, crunched by decay, on the field.
Broken to bits what bore many a man,
glory-glad and goldbright, gaudily gleaming,
proud and wine-plied, pleased with war-splender.
They showed out in silver, in shimmering gemstones,
in riches, in ownings, in eeked-out jewels,
in this bright burg of this broad kingdom.
Stone harbors stood, streams warped hot:
wide wellings. A wall around all,
Its bright bosom where the baths were
hot in the heart of the hamlet, ready.
They let gush forth
over the white stone hot streams
under
up until that
ringed mere also hot
where the baths were.
Then is
greater; that is a kindly thing,
in a house in a village.
[ page 2 of 6 ]