The Seafarer
May I utter truth for myself,
to say of trials, how in the times of toil
I often withstood wearisome times,
bitter breastcare, how I have bided,
come to know on a ship, abode of much care,
the terrible seawave’s rolling often held me there,
anxious nightwatch at the boat’s prow,
when it pitched against cliffs. Pinched by cold
were my feet, frostbound
with cold fetters, there the sighs of care
were hot around the heart; hunger tore from within
the mereweary mood. That the man,
to whom the most pleasant on earth befalls, knows not
how I, wretched and sorrowful, on the ice-cold sea
dwelled in winter in the paths of an exile,
bereft of beloved kinsmen and
hung with icicles; hail flew in showers.
There I heard naught but the sea to roar,
the frigid wave. Sometimes the swan’s song
did I take for entertainment, the gannet’s cry
and curlew’s sound for men’s laughter,
the seagull’s singing for mead.
Storms there beat the stony cliffs, where
the tern, the icy-feathered one, answers him,
very often the eagle screamed round about,
the dewy-feathered one; not any protecting kinsmen
could comfort the wretched spirit. READ MORE…