208

Frea moncynnes,

Fæder and scippend.

Se thære sunnan leoht

Seleth of heofonum,

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Nales on thæm flæsce

Monan and thysum mærum

steorrum.

Se gesceop men on eorthan,

And gesamnade

Sawle to lice.

Et fruman ærest.

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Folc under wolcnum

Emn æthele gesceop,

Fold-buendra.

Ac nu æghwile mon,
The mid ealle bith
His untheawum.
Underthieded;

He forlæt ærest
Lifes frum-sceaft,

And his agene

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Æghwilene mon.

Ethelo swa selfe;

50

Hwy ge thonne æfre,

And eac thone fæder,

Ofer othre men,

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The hine æt fruman gesceop.

Ofermodigen,

Forthæm hine anæthelath

Buton and weorce,

Nu ge unethelne

Enig ne metath?

Hwy ge eow for æthelum

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Up ahebben nu?

Elmihtig God,

That he unethele

A forth thanan

Wyrth on weorulde,
Towuldre ne cymth.

55

On thæm mode bith

All men and all women on earth

Had first their beginning the same,

Into this world of their birth

All of one couple they came:

Alike are the great and the small

No wonder that this should be thus

For God is the Father of all,

The lord and the maker of us.

He giveth light to the sun,

To the moon and the stars as they stand;

The soul and the flesh He made one,

When first he made man in the land.

Wellborn alike are all folk

Whom He hath made under the sky;
Why then on others a yoke

Now will ye be lifting on high?

And why be so causelessly proud,
As thus ye find none are illborn?
Or why, for your rank, from the crowd
Raise yourself up in such scorn?

In the mind of a man, not his make,

In the earth-dweller's heart, not his rank,

Is the nobleness whereof I spake,

The true, and the free, and the frank.

But he that to sin was in thrall,
Illdoing wherever he can,
Hath left the first lifespring of all,
His God, and his rank as a man:

And so the Almighty down-hurl❜d
The noble disgraced by his sin,
Thenceforth to be mean in the world,
And never more glory to win.

Unless one were to forage about for parallel passages, or to descant upon Alfred's good philosophy as texts; or to furnish tables of the words identical to both English and Anglo-Saxon, or to speculate upon the possibilities of metre, there really seems little reason to disturb the patient reader with many notes; let him, instead, have the satisfaction of knowing that our verse is no loose paraphrase, but a close rendering, and that several of these metres seem to be analogous with the short and tripping lines of early minstrelsy. It will be remembered that the true ballad line (as in Macaulay's Lays of Rome), though sometimes written longwise, is in truth an eight-syllable stanza of short lines, and not a four-syllable of long ones: that great German epic, the Niebelungenlied (lately translated with uncommon ability and closeness by William Nanson Lettsom esq.) is an instance strictly in point: and further on (see Metre XXVIII) we have rendered Alfred in a similar measure.

Alas that the evil unrighteous hot will
Of lawlessly wanton desire should still

Be a plague in the mind of each one!
The wild bee shall die in her stinging, tho' shrewd,
So the soul will be lost if the body be lewd,
Unless, ere it wend hence, the heart be imbued
With grief for the deed it hath done.

Oh! it is a fault of weight,

Let him think it out who will,

And a danger passing great

Which can thus allure to ill

Careworn men from the right way,
Swiftly ever led astray.

Will ye seek within the wood

Red gold on the green-trees tall?
None, I wot, is wise that could,
For it grows not there at all:
Neither in winegardens green

Seek they gems of glittering sheen.

Would ye on some hill-top set,

When ye list to catch a trout
Or a carp, your fishing-net?

Men, methinks, have long found out
That it would be foolish fare,

For they know they are not there.

In the salt sea can ye find,
When ye list to start and hunt
With your hounds, the hart or hind?
It will sooner be your wont

In the woods to look, I wot,
Than in seas where they are not.

Is it wonderful to know

That for crystals red or white One must to the sea-beach go, Or for other colours bright, Seeking by the river side

Or the shore at ebb of tide?

Likewise, men are well aware
Where to look for river-fish ;
And all other worldly ware

Where to seek them when they wish;
Wisely careful men will know
Year by year to find them so.

But of all things 'tis most sad
That they foolish are so blind,

So besotted and so mad
That they cannot surely find

Where the ever-good is nigh
And true pleasures hidden lie.

Therefore, never is their strife
After those true joys to spur;
In this lean and little life
They half witted deeply err,

Seeking here their bliss to gain,
That is, God Himself, in vain.

Ah! I know not in my thought
How enough to blame their sin,
Nor so clearly as I ought

Can I show their fault within;

For, more bad and vain are they
And more sad than I can say.

All their hope is to acquire

Worship, goods, and worldly weal;
When they have their mind's desire,
Then such witless Joy they feel,

That in folly they believe

Those True joys they then receive.

Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs, of thistles?" Alfred is of the Wise Teacher's school and bids us seek the chief good beyond this evil world.

XX. OF GOD AND HIS CREATURES.

O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas,-Terrarum cœlique sator, qui tempus ab ævo

Eala min Drihten !
That thu eart ælmihtig,
Micel modilic,

Mærthum gefraege,
And wundorlic,
Witena gehwylcum!

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