The Seafarersource: the Exeter Booktranslation: R.M. LiuzzaI sing a true song of myself,tell of my journeys, how in days of toilI’ve often suffered troubled times,hard heartache, come to knowin the keel of a ship many of care’s dwellings,5terrible tossing of the waves, where the anxiousnight-watch often held me at the ship’s stemwhen it knocks against the cliffs. Pinched with coldwere my feet, bound by frostin cold fetters, while cares seethed10hot around my heart, hunger tore from withinmy sea-weary mind. That man does not know,he whose lot is fairest on land,how I, poor wretch, dwelt all winterin the ice-cold sea in the paths of exile,15deprived of dear kinsmen,hung with icicles of frost while hail flew in showers.I heard nothing there but the noise of the sea,the ice-cold waves; the wild swan’s songsometimes served as my music, the gannet’s call20and the curlew’s cry for the laughter of men,the seagull’s singing for mead-drink.Storms beat the stone cliffs where the tern answered them,icy-feathered; often the eagle screamed,dewy-feathered – no sheltering family25could bring consolation to my abandoned soul. And so1 he who has tasted life’s joy in towns,and few sad journeys, scarcely believes,proud and puffed up with wine, what I, weary,have often had to endure in my seafaring.30 1 The repeated connecting word forthon is notoriously difficult in this poem – it pointsforwards and/or backwards, meaning either ‘therefore’ or ‘thus’. In a poem whose logiclaprogression is by no means clear or easy to follow this is a significant source ofambiguity. I have chosen to render it with the vague ‘and so’, hoping to preserve some ofthe interpretive difficulty found in the original.The night-shadow darkened; snow came from the north,frost bound the ground, hail fell on earth,coldest of grains. And so2 they compel me now,my heart-thoughts, to try for myselfthe high seas, the flow of salt streams;35my heart’s desire urges my spirittime and again to travel, so that I might seekfar from here a foreign land.And so no man on earth is so proud in spirit,nor so good in gifts or keen in youth,40nor so bold in deeds, nor so loyal to his lord,that he never has sorrow at his seafaring,when he sees what the Lord has in store for him.He has no thought of the harp or the taking of rings,nor the pleasures of women or worldly joy,45nor anything else but the tumbling waves —he always has longing who hastens to sea.The groves take blossom, fair grow the cities,the fields brighten, the world rushes on;all these urge the eager-hearted50spirit to travel, when he has a mindto journey far over the flood-ways.Even the cuckoo urges with its sad voice,summer’s guardian announces sorrowbitter in the breast-hoard. He does not know,55the man blessed with ease, what those endurewho walk most widely in the paths of exile. And so now my thought flies out from my breast,my spirit across the sea-floodflies out widely over the whale’s home,60to the corners of the earth, and comes back to megreedy and hungry; the lone flier cries out,incites my heart ceaselessly to the whale’s path 2 The disjunction between what has come before and what come after this line is so greatthat it has been proposed that a second speaker is introduced here (there are no quotationmarks in Old English that might clarify this ambiguity). Though this ‘two-speaker’ theoryis no longer widely accepted, it reflects the difficulty many critics have reconciling theconflicting attitudes presented in the poem – sea voyage as terrible suffering, sea voyageas longed-for escape (as in the first chapter of Melville’s Moby-Dick), sea-voyage asmetaphor for spiritual pilgrimage, or even for life itself.over the open sea – and so hotter to meare the joys of the Lord than this dead life,65loaned, on land.3 I will never believethat earthly goods will endure forever.Always, inevitably, one of three thingshangs in the balance before its due time:illness or age or attack by the sword70wrests life away from one doomed to die.And so for every man the praise of posterity,those coming after, is the best eulogy —that before he must be on his way, he actbravely on earth against the enemies’ malice,75do bold deeds to beat the devil,so the sons of men might salute him afterwards,and his praise thereafter live with the angelsforever and ever, in the joy of eternal life,delight among heaven’s host. The days are lost,80and all the pomp of this earthly kingdom;there are not neither kings nor emperorsnor gold-givers like there once were,when they did the greatest glorious deedsand lived in most lordly fame.85Fallen is all this noble host, their happiness fled,the weaker ones remain and rule the world,get what they can with toil. Joy is laid low,the earth’s nobility grows old and withers,just like every man throughout middle-earth.90Old age overtakes him, his face grows pale,the graybeard grieves; he knows his old friends,offspring of princes, have been given to the earth.When life fails him, his fleshly cloak will neithertaste sweetness nor touch soreness,95nor move a hand nor think with his mind.Though a brother may wish to strew his brother’sgrave with gold, lay him among the dead 3 At this point the sea-voyage is revealed to be a journey of spiritual discovery, as in theHiberno-Latin Voyage of St Brendan. The hermit-monks of Ireland had a particularpenchant for taking to small boats and trusting in God for their safety. Some reachedIceland, some are rumored to have reached the Americas; many others, no doubt, foundrest at the bottom of the sea.with many treasures to take with him,that gold will be useless before the terror of God100for the soul that is full of sin,the gold he has hidden while he lived here on earth. Great is the terror of God, the earth trembles before it;He established the sturdy foundations,the earth’s solid surface and the high heavens.105Foolish is he who fears not the Lord; death will find him unprepared.Blessed is he who lives humbly; that mercy comes to him from heaven,the Maker establishes that mind in him, for he believes in His might.A man must steer a strong mind and keep it stable,steadfast in its promises, pure in its ways;110every man must hold in moderationhis love for a friend and his hatred for a foe,though he may wish him full of fire……or his friend consumedon a funeral pyre.4 Fate is greater,115the Maker mightier than any man’s thoughts. Let us consider where we