Monday, May 25, 2020

Beda Venerabilis

Today is the feast of St. Beda of Jarrow, Doctor of the Church, better known as the Venerable Bede. A poem attributed to him:

Bede's Death Song
tr. by Craig Williamson


Before he departs on that inescapable journey
Down death's road, no man is so wise
That he knows his own end, so clever or unconstrained
That he need not contemplate the coming judgment,
Consider what good or evil resides in his soul,
What rich reward or bounty of unblessings
Will be offered in eternity when his time runs out.


[Craig Williamson, The Complete Old English Poems, University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia: 2017) p. 1051.]

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please understand that this weblog runs on a third-party comment system, not on Blogger's comment system. If you have come by way of a mobile device and can see this message, you may have landed on the Blogger comment page, or the third party commenting system has not yet completely loaded; your comments will only be shown on this page and not on the page most people will see, and it is much more likely that your comment will be missed.