The Tuesday Poem: The Seafarer (Unknown Author, From The Anglo-Saxon)
The Seafarer
May I of my own self
Truth’s song reckon,
Tell of my traverse,
How I oft endured
Days of hardship
Times of trouble,
Bitter the breast-care
That I suffered,
Known at my keel
Many a care’s hold,
Dread wave-fall
When wary night-watch
Found me often
There at the ship’s stem,
Wave-tossed, by cliff-wall.
Cold-fettered
My feet
Frost-bound
In cold clasp,
Where cares seethed then
Hot at the heart;
Hunger within tore
The sea-weary soul.
…
from the Anglo-Saxon original; an abridged version translated by A.S. Kline © 2010
Reproduction in accordance with the translator’s permission.
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Featuring “Legendary” Poems:
The David Gemmell Legend Award longlist came out recently, so while the voting period is open until 31 July, I thought I’d feature what I consider to be legendary and/or epic poems each Tuesday.
While The Seafarer does not deal with the business of gods and heroes in the same way as last week’s featured poem, The Iliad, I nonetheless feel that it traverses “epic” material in terms of the focus on the wayfarer’s journey as suffering, isolation, and travail. And as I will argue on Thursday, on SF Signal, the juxtaposition of the internal and external journey, as part of the hero’s quest, lies at the heart of epic storytelling.
While this is, once again, only an excerpt from the full poem, you can read the full version here (this is the version from which I have drawn today’s excerpt), or the Ezra Pound translation here.
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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.
This has a great rhythm and I really like the economy of language (wave-tossed, cold-fettered). They knew how to write, those old poets!
They sure did–and understood as well that poetry was about rhythm, resonance, and richness—not just of language, though definitely that—but also emotion and evocation.
Lovely stuff, Helen! I am going to have to look up the full poem.
I don’t think you’ll be disappointed, Paul