Physiologus II: The Whale
Now I will draw words from the well
Of memory, shaping with song-craft
The tale of a fish, the great whale
Who’s discovered unwittingly, unwillingly,
By seafarers and wave-travelers. 5
He’s deadly and dangerous, cruel and savage,
To every man. He is life-grim.
The name of this ancient sea-floater
Is Fastitocalon. His form is like rough stone,
Like sea-weed floating near sand-banks, 10
Drifting up and down at the water’s edge.
Sailors think him a lovely island,
When they see him, so they can safely fasten
Their high-prowed ships to that un-land
With anchor-ropes, moor their sea-steeds 15
At the dark edge of this dissembling strand.
Then the sea-weary men disembark
On the devious shore, leaving their ships
Bound fast to the rim, surrounded by sea.
The sailors make camp, expecting no evil, 20
Fearing no fight. They kindle a flame,
Build a fire on that floating island,
Mind-weary men thankful for a rest,
Glad for the gift of a safe harbor.
When the fiendish fish, cruel and crafty, 25
Senses that the seafarers are finally settled down
On his sandlike skin, enjoying the weather,
Then suddenly the demon dives down,
Rides the salt-roads into sea-depths,
Settles on the bottom where he drowns them all 30
In a dark death-hall, both ships and men.
This is also the way of demons and devils,
Who snare life’s travelers through secret power
And devious plots. They seduce and ruin
The good will and works of men, 35
Tricking them into turning to their foes,
Depending on their enemies, finding cruel
Companionship in the comfort of fiends,
When they settle down in the Devil’s home.
When he knows through his cruel craft 40
And perverse purpose that some people
From the race of men are in his power,
Bound by his chains—then the soul-slayer
Takes their lives through his savage skill,
The high and the humble, the proud and perishing, 45
Who do his dark will, mired in sin,
Here in this human land. Suddenly he bolts into hell,
Hiding under the dark helmet of night.
Deprived of good, he seeks the bottomless surge
Of terrible torment in the opaque gloom, 50
Just like the great whale who sinks ships,
Dragging sailors to the death-hall of doom.
The sea-charger, the proud whale
Has another strange trait. Out in the ocean,
When hunger harrows the awesome beast 55
And he’s desperate for food, the sea’s guardian
Opens his mouth, stretching his lips.
A beautiful scent rises up from inside him,
Which snares all kinds of smaller fish.
They dart on the waves to that sweet smell 60
Streaming out. They all crowd into that cave
Without thinking, wary of nothing,
Until the monster’s maw is overflowing.
Then quickly he claps his grim jaws shut,
Snaring his battle-prey in his savage mouth. 65
So it is with each unwary man
Who wastes his days, his fleeting years,
His tenuous life—who loses his will
And is deceived by the sweet scent—
So that stained with sin, drunk with desire, 70
He is marked with guilt before God,
The King of Glory. The cursed one
Opens for him the gates of hell
At the end of life’s great journey
And offers his dark gift to those 75
Who have falsely and foolishly followed
The joys of the flesh, delighting in the body
Against the wise guidance of the soul.
When the deceiver has dragged them down
Into that fierce prison with craft and cunning, 80
Into the ravening fire, that raging flame,
Then he attacks those who have listened to him in life
And taken his teachings eagerly to heart.
After the life-slaughter, he snaps shut
His grim jaws, the gates of hell. 85
No one inside can ever escape—
No exit, no return. Just like small fish,
Such seafarers cannot escape from the whale’s maw.
Therefore we must always be wary of the whale’s trap,
The Devil’s trickery, any unholy deceit, 90
And put our trust in the Lord of lords,
Strive against all devils, whether fish or fiend,
With words and deeds, so that we can fix our eyes
On the King of Glory. Let us look to him
For peace and salvation in this fleeting life, 95
So that we may dwell in glory with the dear one,
Near and far, both now and forever.
PHYSIOLOGUS III: PARTRIDGE OR PHOENIX?
This poem has traditionally been edited with the homiletic fragment that follows as a single poem, though there are obvious breaks in the manuscript and in the syntax and meaning. The combined poem has traditionally been identified as a partridge in the tripartite Physiologus, but Drout (2007) argues instead for a phoenix. In his edition of the Exeter Book, Muir argues that the homiletic fragment is a separate poem (see the headnote to that poem). As it stands, it is difficult to tell what sort of bird is meant here.
Physiologus III: Partridge or Phoenix?
I heard of a strange story told
About a wondrous, beautiful bird
* * *
HOMILETIC FRAGMENT III: GOD’S BRIGHT WELCOME
This is one of two homilies or homiletic fragments in the Exeter Book; there is a third in the Vercelli Book. Number III here comes before number II in the sequence because when the poems were first identified and titled, it was thought to be part of the preceding poem, The Partridge. Drout (2007) suggests that this is a long phoenix poem with missing portions. The latest editor of the Exeter Book argues for a missing folio conjugate between the poems which accounts for the textual loss and believes this segment to be another homiletic fragment (Muir, 9, 590). In this homiletic poem, the Lord entreats his listeners (or readers) to turn away from hellfirena swearta, “dark hell-sins” or “hellish crimes,” and follow him in order to become beorhte gebroþor, or “bright, radiant brethren.”
Homiletic Fragment III: God’s Bright Welcome
* * *
And the Lord of light spoke these words:
“Truly when you turn to me in trust,
Following me in faith, whole in your heart’s love,
And flee from the darkness of hell-sins,
Then I will turn kindly, mercifully to you, 5
With a sweet familial love, an old affection,
And welcome you home with open arms,
Offer you blessings beyond number,
Count you my comely and cherished children,
My bright brethren, my loving radiance.” 10
So let us yearn eagerly to please God,
Hate sin, turn away from torment,
Earn what’s deep-down wanted
By us, by God, his peace and protection,
His kindness and comfort, his ushering in 15
Each yearning heart as long as the day lights,
The sun livens our breath and being.
Then we shall dwell in the brightest of homes,
The best of havens, the glory of God.
Finis.
SOUL AND BODY II
&
nbsp; This is one of two Soul and Body poems in Old English; the other, longer version, which contains not only the lament of the damned soul (as the Exeter version does here) but also the celebration of the saved or blessed soul, occurs in the Vercelli Book. Fragments of The Soul’s Address to the Body are also found in the Worcester Fragments (see the “Additional Poems” section). The common portions of the poems are alike in most ways, though there are subtle differences in usage and spelling (see Moffat’s 1990 edition for comparative versions). Fulk and Cain note that “the soul’s address to the body and the horrors of the rotting corpse are standard homiletic themes … [and] though the Exeter version lacks the less colorful speech of the saved soul, the two versions must stem from a common written tradition” (138). The soul and body are separated at death so that each suffers a different fate: the soul laments the sins of the body while the body suffers mutely, a feast for worms. Anderson points out in his edition that “though the onslaught of the worms is luridly described, the corpse cannot feel its horrors, which will end when the greedy worms have divided and eaten it [while] the soul, on the other hand, will know its own agony forever” (48). Similar themes are found in The Grave, Judgment Day I, Judgment Day II, and Christ III: Judgment.
Soul and Body II
Truly every man needs to see and understand
The state of his soul, the fate of its journey,
How dark it will be when grim death comes
To separate those kinsmen, body and soul,
Who were so long together, joined as one. 5
Long afterwards the soul shall receive
God’s just reward, either grief or glory,
Torment or true bliss, depending on what
The body has earned for it, the world-walker,
Dust-dweller, in their days on earth. 10
The soul shall come every seventh night
For three hundred years, moaning in misery,
Seeking the body, that carrion coat
It wore before, that unthriving flesh,
Unless God determines the world’s doom 15
Sooner than that, almighty Father, eternal Lord.
Then the soul shall speak, discourse with dust,
Crying out its cares with chilling words:
“You cruel, bloody clod, what have you done?
Why did you torment me, filth of flesh, 20
Wasting world-rot, food for worms,
Effigy of earth? You gave little thought
To the state of your soul and how it might suffer
After leaving your clutch, lifted from flesh,
Or how long you might molder and spoil. 25
Are you blaming me, you wicked wretch?
Worm-food, did you ever consider
How long this would last, the length of forever?
God in his goodness gave you a spirit—
The Lord in his great power and glory 30
Sent you by an angel from his home in heaven
The gift of a soul from his own hand;
Then he redeemed you with his holy blood,
His sacred suffering, his blessed sacrifice.
Yet you bound me with hard hunger 35
And cruel thirst; you tied me to torments
In hell’s dark home, made me a slave.
Oh, I lived inside you, encompassed by flesh,
Trapped in my torment, your sinful desires,
Your lusty pleasures. I couldn’t escape. 40
Your evil pressed upon me so strongly
That it sometimes seemed that I might have to wait
Thirty thousand years till the day you died.
So I waited in misery for our moment of parting—
Now the end of this waiting is not so good! 45
You were puffed up with pride, gorging on food,
Drunk with wine, feasting on pleasure
Like some wild beast, while I felt a thirst
For the body of God, a soulful drink.
If you had considered in your long life here 50
While I had to live with you in the wretched world,
That you were directed to flesh, drawn to lust,
Sated with sin, yet steadied and strengthened
By the gift of a soul sent from God,
Then you never would have tormented me 55
So severely with the desires of your hellish heart.
Now you will suffer disgrace with my shame,
Grief with my grieving, on that great day
When the only-begotten Son gathers up mankind.
Now you are no more loved as a faithful companion, 60
No more important to anyone alive,
Mother or father, kith or kin,
Than the darkest of birds, the black raven,
The carrion crow—not since I left you,
Sent on a journey by the same holy hand 65
That brought me down to the flesh-house before.
Now comes the day of his hard reckoning.
You can’t buy any easy way out of the journey
Toward judgment—not with crimson jewels,
Not with silly trinkets, not with silver or gold, 70
Not with worldly goods. Now you must abide
In the earth’s embrace. What remains, my body,
Will be stripped to the bone, its sinews shredded,
Its ligaments ripped away, while I, your soul,
Must seek you out, unwilling yet undaunted, 75
Revile you with words as you did me with deeds.
You are deaf and dumb to the living world,
But not to me. Your pleasures are past.
Still I must visit you at night with my need,
Driven by sorrow, afflicted by sin, 80
Only to flee at cockcrow, when holy men
Sing praise-songs to the living God.
I must leave for the lands appointed to me
By your dark deeds, a home for the homeless,
A house of shame. Mold-worms and maggots 85
Will feed on your flesh, chew up your sinews,
Dark greedy creatures, gluttons munching you
Moment by moment back to the bone.
The extravagances you offered, the vanities you paraded
Here on earth before people, finally mean nothing. 90
Better for you than the accumulated wealth of the world—
Unless you’d given your riches to God as a gift—
Would be to have been conceived from the beginning
As a bird in the air, a fish in the flood,
Or an animal on the earth, grazing along, 95
A dumb ox in the field without wit,
Or the wildest beast wandering the wasteland,
If God had willed it, or even the worst of worms,
Than ever to have been born a man to take baptism.
You will have to answer for both of us 100
On the dread day of reckoning when all the wounds
Wrought by men in this world are revealed,
The sores of sin, the marks of misery.
Then the Lord himself, the Shaper of heaven,
Will determine a judgment, a just reward. 105
What will you say to God on Doomsday?
You will have to pay for each sin separately,
With each small joint in your hand or limb—
A grim judgment from a stern judge.
But what are we going to do together 110
When God has conceived us as one again?
Then we will endure the multitude of miseries,
The gathering of griefs, you allotted for us earlier.”
Then the soul will revile the flesh-hold,
Condemn the body, the cold corpse, 115
As it hastens away to the depths of hell,
Tormented by sinful deeds, not to the holy
Delights of heaven. The dust will lie still—
It cannot respond, offer the sad soul
Some ar
gument or answer, some ease for the spirit, 120
Some support or peace. A corpse cannot speak.
Its head is split open, its hands torn apart,
Its jaw is gaping, its palate cracked,
Its gums shredded, its throat ripped out,
Its sinews sucked away, its neck gnawed apart. 125
Savage worms now ravage its ribs,
Bloodthirsty ones gulping down gore.
Its tongue is ripped into ten pieces,
A delightful feast for the little devourers,
So it cannot speak to the soul, trade talk 130
With the wretched spirit. The name of the worm
Is Ravenous Greedy-Mouth, whose hard jaws
Are sharp as needles. He is the first visitor
To venture in the grave, crunching through ground.
He rips up the tongue, bores through the teeth, 135
Eats down through the eyes into the head,
Inviting the other gobblers to a great feast,
When the wretched body has cooled down
That once wore clothes against the cold.
Then it becomes the feast for worms, 140
Cold carrion, a banquet for maggots.
Wise men should remember this.
DEOR
Deor is rare among Old English poems in that it is written in stanzas and includes a refrain. It has been interpreted in many ways—among them a dramatic monologue, a charm for good fortune, a begging poem, an elegy, and a poem of consolation (Muir, 597–98). It follows a series of homiletic or religious poems and precedes two elegies and the first group of riddles; it is a poem that bridges the homiletic and the enigmatic. Both the form of the poem and its murky historical details are much debated. Deor weaves stories out of Germanic history and legend and shapes a moral reflection from them. Each stanza details a particular story of misfortune and suffering, ending with a refrain intended to generalize sorrow to hold some hope for its passing away with time. The refrain, Þœs ofereode; þisses swa mæg, “That passed over—so can this,” appears to offer some hope for the surcease of the narrator’s suffering. The central paradox here is that while misfortunes may “pass over” in time, they remain in the mind of the singer in fragmented form. Ironically, the poem conveys a deep sense of loss even as it claims to ameliorate it.
The Complete Old English Poems Page 62