Saturday, June 16, 2018
Greatness
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892), "Battle of Brunanburh," lines 15-19, in Tennyson, A Selected Edition. Edited by Christopher Ricks (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), p. 622:
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Theirs was a greatnessThe original, lines 7-10, from The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. Edited by Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942 = The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, VI), pp. 16-17:
Got from their Grandsires —
Theirs that so often in
Strife with their enemies
Struck for their hoards and their hearths and their homes.
swa him geæþele wæs
from cneomægum, þæt hi æt campe oft
wiþ laþra gehwæne land ealgodon,
hord and hamas.