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Used First to Praise the Sea or Sword

At fifty generations’ end
(And such abysses time affords us all)
I return to the further shore of a great river
That the vikings’ dragons did not reach,
To the harsh and arduous words
That, with a mouth now turned to dust,
I used in my Northumbrian, Mercian days
Before I became a Haslam or Borges.
On Saturday we read that Julius Caesar
Was the first man out of Romeburg to strip the veil from England;
Before the clusters swell again on the vine
I shall have heard the voice of the nightingale
With its enigma, and the elegy of the warrior twelve
That surround the tomb of their king.
Symbols of other symbols, variations
On the English or German future seem these words to me
That once on a time were images
A man made use of praising the sea or sword;
Tomorrow they will live again,
Tomorrow fyr will not be fire but that form
Of a tamed and changing god
It has been given to none to see without an ancient dread.

Praised be the infinite
Mesh of effects and causes
Which, before it shews me the mirror
In which I shall see no-one or I shall see another,
Grants me now this contemplation pure
Of a language of the dawn.

—Jorge Luis Borges, “On Beginning the Study of Anglo-Saxon Grammar,” from Dreamtigers
translated by Harold Morland

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