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Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library #32
Old English Shorter Poems, Volume II: Wisdom and Lyric
The twenty-five poems and eleven metrical charms in this Old English volume offer tantalizing insights into the mental landscape of the Anglo-Saxons. The Wanderer and The Seafarer famously combine philosophical consolation with introspection to achieve a spiritual understanding of life as a journey. The Wife's Lament, The Husband's Message, and Wulf and Eadwacer direct a subjective lyrical intensity on the perennial themes of love, separation, and the passion for vengeance. From suffering comes wisdom, and these poems find meaning in the loss of fortune and reputation, exile, and alienation. "Woe is wondrously clinging; clouds glide," reads a stoic, matter-of-fact observation in Maxims II on nature's indifference to human suffering. Another form of wisdom emerges in the form of folk remedies, such as charms to treat stabbing pain, cysts, childbirth, and nightmares of witch-riding caused by a dwarf. The enigmatic dialogues of Solomon and Saturn combine scholarly erudition and proverbial wisdom. Learning of all kinds is celebrated, including the meaning of individual runes in The Rune Poem and the catalog of legendary heroes in Widsith. This book is a welcome complement to the previously published DOML volume Old English Shorter Poems, Volume I: Religious and Didactic.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 2014
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About the author
Robert E. Bjork
21Ìýbooks13ÌýfollowersRobert E. Bjork is Foundation Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he has taught since 1983 and where he was Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) from 1994 to 2018. He earned his B.A. from Pomona College in 1971, his M.A. from UCLA in 1974 and his Ph.D. in 1979, also from UCLA. He was named Foundation Professor of English in 2009. His primary research areas are Old English poetry, modern Swedish literature, and biomedical writing; he has published 18 books and 26 peer-reviewed articles. His and R. D. Fulk's and John D. Niles's Klaeber's Beowulf (the 4th edition of Frederick Klaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg) was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2008. He is General Editor of the 4-volume The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, published in June, 2010, and his second volume of facing-page translations of Old English poems for Harvard University Press was published in the spring of 2014. He is currently working on a history of Scandinavian scholarship on Anglo-Saxon literature. He's past President of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists, a recipient of an NEH senior fellowship and a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), a Corresponding Fellow of the English Association (United Kingdom), and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. In addition, he also serves on the editorial boards of Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge University Press), Mediaevistik: Internationale Zeitschrift für Interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung (Peter Lang Verlag), and the University of Toronto Press's "Toronto Old Norse-Icelandic Studies" series as well as on the International Advisory Boards of National Sun Yat-sen University Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Taiwan, and of the Medieval Centre, National Chung-Cheng University, Taiwan.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 11, 2017
As translation, not a huge success. Useful if you're not great with the language and want help understanding the poems literally. But not much feeling for the poetry as poetry, or at least I hope not... if so, the Anglo-Saxons were terrible poets.
January 17, 2023
One of my least favorite translations of “The Ruin.�
February 8, 2023
This book is a collection of anglo-saxon poetry from the old English period (800s-1000s approx.), written in old English on one page, and modern English on the other. Given that, it's clear it's aimed mostly at an academic audience, so if you're a student of the old English language I imagine this will be very useful. As a more casual reader, I found it interesting for several reasons.
First, it helps you get into the mindset of England when it was newly Christianized, and what people were thinking about in that time. Second, it uses poetry in a way foreign to most modern folk. In this book you have poems of moral instruction, poems of practical day-to-day wisdom, poetic charms against evils, things we'd never think of doing with poetry today, it would all be prose. But then you remember that this wasn't a literate society, and most people would've heard these things sung by priests or bards or troubadors, and suddenly the poetic structure makes more sense, makes it easier to remember and recite that way. As for the poems themselves, there are a few noteworthy ones, mostly the well-known ones (The Wanderer and The Seafarer). There are a number of religious-themed ones too. A lot of them may not be great reads as poems themselves, to modern audiences at least, but are still interesting as glimpses into the structure and thinking of the people in dark age England. A neat collection for those interested in history or language.
First, it helps you get into the mindset of England when it was newly Christianized, and what people were thinking about in that time. Second, it uses poetry in a way foreign to most modern folk. In this book you have poems of moral instruction, poems of practical day-to-day wisdom, poetic charms against evils, things we'd never think of doing with poetry today, it would all be prose. But then you remember that this wasn't a literate society, and most people would've heard these things sung by priests or bards or troubadors, and suddenly the poetic structure makes more sense, makes it easier to remember and recite that way. As for the poems themselves, there are a few noteworthy ones, mostly the well-known ones (The Wanderer and The Seafarer). There are a number of religious-themed ones too. A lot of them may not be great reads as poems themselves, to modern audiences at least, but are still interesting as glimpses into the structure and thinking of the people in dark age England. A neat collection for those interested in history or language.
March 26, 2025
A great resource for Heathens, given that it has a lot of resources all in one place. Some of the best resources for the Heathen reader are The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The Rune Poem, and the charms. In addition are several other wonderful poems that give some neat context to Anglo-Saxon poetry. I personally very much enjoyed the Maxims and the Husband and Wife poems. I've had this for a while and have been using it for a few years, but decided to go through the poetry I hadn't yet read. This is a really fun window into history. The translation may be hit or miss, as it seems to be preserving the words over beauty, that that doesn't resonate with some people, but for me it's what I was looking for. So from that perspective, this is great.
March 8, 2017
"Cyning sceal rice healdan. Ceastra beoð feorran gesyne,
orðanc enta geweorc, þa þe on þysse eorðan syndon,
wrætlic weallstana geweorc. Wind byð on lyfte swiftust,
þunar byð þragum hludast. þrymmas syndan Cristes myccle,
wyrd byð swiðost. Winter byð cealdost,
lencten hrimigost (he byð lengest ceald),
sumor sunwlitegost (swegel byð hatost),
hærfest hreðeadegost, hæleðum bringeð
geres wæstmas, þa þe him god sendeð.
Soð bið switolost, sinc byð deorost,
gold gumena gehwam, and gomol snoterost,
fyrngearum frod, se þe ær feala gebideð.
Weax bið wundrum clibbor. Wolcnu scriðað."
orðanc enta geweorc, þa þe on þysse eorðan syndon,
wrætlic weallstana geweorc. Wind byð on lyfte swiftust,
þunar byð þragum hludast. þrymmas syndan Cristes myccle,
wyrd byð swiðost. Winter byð cealdost,
lencten hrimigost (he byð lengest ceald),
sumor sunwlitegost (swegel byð hatost),
hærfest hreðeadegost, hæleðum bringeð
geres wæstmas, þa þe him god sendeð.
Soð bið switolost, sinc byð deorost,
gold gumena gehwam, and gomol snoterost,
fyrngearum frod, se þe ær feala gebideð.
Weax bið wundrum clibbor. Wolcnu scriðað."
July 6, 2024
Only really talking about SSI and SSII here: reverse presentation; the pagan is the booksmart intellectual, and the biblical king is (according to some) a wizard? (I disagree, but that’s essay material). Prayer seems to work like magic, the runic letters of “PATERNOSTER� beating the holy fuck out of the devil. Real vague, as OE poetry usually is. Full marks for alliteration. Half marks for runes.
July 30, 2014
A great translation presented in a beautiful book. Well worth reading for anybody curious about Old English Poetry.
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