Where gannets swoop and rise
In the countdown to a major gift-giving season, I liked this ancient reference to a human presents. May you give and...
Horn-pronged gables
This reminds me of some of the pointed and upturning gables and eaves in traditional Chinese and south-east Asian architecture.
...
Translation as hammering
Heaney conveys in a simple image the difficulty of translating poetry. Elsewhere, he refers to his progress as being ‘scriptorium...
War as weaving
This is the first time I have heard of the gods weaving human fate on a loom; echoes of Penelope, but...
Fate goes as ever fate must
This translation by Seamus Heaney rings like a proverb on the immutability of fate. Elsewhere, he brings it up close and...
Rock-piled roof
Another structure you would hope could keep the Grendel gremlins out, ideally providing a 'dry-stone vault' underneath.
Source: Seamus Heaney, Beowulf...
Hate-honed swords and other battle gear
Everything a battle-scarred Swede could need: fine-forged mesh to protect him from other people's hate-honed swords, and a great-shafted spear...
May you not thole
'Thole' is an Old English word for 'to suffer' or to endure without complaint.  It also refers to a pin, typically one...
The poetry of endurance
Endurance is intrinsic to the poem of Beowulf, and is vividly and touchingly depicted here as a bedrock of humanity....
Past into future will go
I like this concept of an inheritance as something solidly rooted in the past, but ‘willable forward again and again...
String-thin paths
A knife-edge precarity in this phrase. Â May your paths be broad and sure!
Source: Beowulf, Kevin Crossley-Holland, illus. by Charles Keeping (Oxford...
A voice to clear the head
Trying to imagine a 'head-clearing voice' - is it a singing, shouting or speaking voice? Â Or is it just...
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