"The Seafarer" is an anonymous Old English elegiac poem on the cares of the mariner's life. It dates from the 8th or 9th century.
Quotes
The translations used here are by Michael Alexander, and are taken from his The Earliest English Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).
- Þæt se beorn ne wat,
sefteadig secg, hwæt þa sume dreogað
þe þa wræclastas widost lecgað.- Blithe heart cannot know,
Through its happiness, what hardships they suffer
Who drive the foam-furrow furthest from land. - Line 55
- Blithe heart cannot know,
- Simle þreora sum þinga gehwylce
ær his tiddege to tweon weorþeð:
adl oþþe yldo oþþe ecghete
fægum fromweardum feorh oðþringeð.- Three things all ways threaten a man's peace
And one before the end shall overthrow his mind;
Either illness or age or the edge of vengeance
Shall draw out the breath from the doom-shadowed. - Line 68
- Three things all ways threaten a man's peace
- Nearon nu cyningas ne caseras
ne goldgiefan swylce iu wæron,
þonne hi mæst mid him mærþa gefremedon
ond on dryhtlicestum dome lifdon.- Kings are not now, kaisers are not,
There are no gold-givers like the gone masters
Who between them framed the first deeds in the world,
In their lives lordly, in the lays renowned. - Line 82
- Kings are not now, kaisers are not,
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