Translated Versions of Beowulf

Beowulf:
Translated Versions

There are many translated versions of the poem Beowulf. Below are several versions of Beowulf, translated by various people. The first three are referred to on the "Similarities and Differences" page, and the other is supplied further illustrate the differences of various versions of the text.

Then she carried him, armor
And sword and all, to her home; he struggled
To free his weapon, and failed. The fight
Brought other monsters swimming to see
Her catch, a host of sea beasts who beat at
His mail shirt, stabbing with tusks and teeth
As they followed along. Then he realized, suddenly,
That she'd brought him into someone's battle-hall,
And there the water's heat could not hurt him,
Nor anything in the lake attack him through
The building's high-arching roof. A brilliant
Light burned all around him, the lake
Itself like a fiery flame.

Version 1
Burton Raffel

Then once she touched bottom, that wolfish swimmer
carried the ring-mailed prince to her court
so that for all his courage he could never use
the weapons he carried; and a bewildering horde
came at him from the depths, droves of sea-beasts
who attacked with tusks and tore at his chain-mail
in a ghastly onslaught. The gallant man
could see he had entered some hellish turn-hole
and yet the water did not work against him
because the hall-roofing held off
the force of the current; then he saw firelight,
a gleam and flare-up, a glimmer of brightness.

Version 2
Seamus Heaney

Then the angry sea-wolf         swam to the bottom,
carried to her den        the lord of those rings,
clutched him so hard        he might not draw sword,
--no matter how brave--        and terrible water-beasts
attacked as they plunged,         strange sea-creatures
with sword-like tusks        thrust at his armor,
monsters tore at him.        The noble prince
then saw he was [in]        some sort of hall,
inhospitable,        where no water reached;
a vaulted roof        kept the rushing flood
from coming down;        he saw firelight,
a flickering blaze,        bright glaring flames.

Version 3
Howell D. Chickering

Version 4
Francis Gummere

Then bore this brine-wolf, when bottom she touched,
the lord of rings to the lair she haunted
whiles vainly he strove, though his valor held,
weapon to wield against wondrous monsters
that sore beset him; sea-beasts many
tried with fierce tusks to tear his mail,
and swarmed on the stranger. But soon he marked
he was now in some hall, he knew not which,
where water never could work him harm,
nor through the roof could reach him ever
fangs of the flood. Firelight he saw,
beams of a blaze that brightly shone.

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