Old English Poems / Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose

E-text prepared by Carla Foust, Stephen Hutcheson, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
TRANSLATED INTO THE ORIGINAL METER
TOGETHER WITH SHORT SELECTIONS FROM OLD ENGLISH PROSE
BY COSETTE FAUST, Ph.D. ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY AND STITH THOMPSON, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK
Copyright, 1918 By Scott, Foresman and Company
ROBERT O. LAW COMPANY EDITION BOOK MANUFACTURERS CHICAGO, U.S.A.
These selections from Old English poetry have been translated to meet the needs of that ever-increasing body of students who cannot read the poems in their original form, but who wish nevertheless to enjoy to some extent the heritage of verse which our early English ancestors have left for us. Especially in the rapid survey of English literature given in most of our colleges, a collection of translations covering the Anglo-Saxon period and reflecting the form and spirit of the original poems should add much to a fuller appreciation of the varied and rich, though uneven, literary output of our earliest singers.
In subject-matter these Old English poems are full of the keenest interest to students of history, of customs, of legend, of folk-lore, and of art. They form a truly national literature; so that one who has read them all has learned much not only of the life of the early English, but of the feelings that inspired these folk, of their hopes, their fears, and their superstitions, of their whole outlook on life. They took their poetry seriously, as they did everything about them, and often in spite of crudity of expression, of narrow vision, and of conventionalized modes of speech, this very “high seriousness” raises an otherwise mediocre poem to the level of real literature. Whatever may be said of the limitations of Old English poetry, of its lack of humor, of the narrow range of its sentiments, of the imitativeness of many of its most representative specimens, it cannot be denied the name of real literature; for it is the direct expression of the civilization that gave it birth—a civilization that we must understand if we are to appreciate the characteristics of its more important descendants of our own time.