Kent-Drury
English 202
Test Quotations
1. "Help! Water! Water! For
Heaven’s love!"/ The carpenter, startled from sleep above,/ And hearing shouts for water and a thud,/ Thought “Heaven
help us! Here comes Nowell’s flood!
2. ...a sparrow flies swiftly through
the hall. It enters in at one door and
quickly flies out through the other. For
the few moments it is inside the storm and wintry tempest cannot touch it, but
after the briefest moment of calm, it flits from your sight, out of the wintry
storm and into it again. So this life of
man appears but for a moment; what follows or indeed what went before, we know
not at all. If this new doctrine brings us more certain information, it seems
right that we should accept it.
3. “Haven’t you heard,” said Nicholas, “what a
black /Business it was, when Noah tried to whip /His wife (who wouldn’t come)
on board the ship? He’d have been better pleased, I’ll undertake,/With all that weather just about to break,/If she had had
a vessel of her own..
4. “My lady,” he said, “let me be!/I have no desire to love you. /I’ve served the king a long
time;/I don’t want to betray my faith to him./Never,
for you or for your love,/will I do anything to harm my lord.”
5. …a most distinguished man,/Who from the day on which he first began /To ride abroad
had followed chivalry,/Truth, honour, generousness
and courtesy.
6. …And she spoke daintily in French,
extremely,/After the
7. …I began to think /about composing
some good stories/and translating from Latin to Romance; /but that was not to
bring me fame: /too many others have done it./Then I
thought of the lais
I’d heard./I did not doubt, indeed I knew well,/that those who first began
them/and sent them forth/composed them in order to preserve/adventures they had
heard.
8. …she fell down because she could not
stand or kneel, but writhed and wrestled with her body, spreading her arms out
wide, and cried with a loud voice as though her heart would have burst apart,
for in the city of her soul she saw truly and freshly how our Lord was
crucified.
9. And first, he was faultless in his
five senses,/Nor found ever to fail in his five fingers,/and all his fealty was
fixed upon the five wounds/That Christ got on the cross, as the creed
tells.../That all his force was founded on the five joys/That the high Queen of
heaven had in her child.../The fifth of the five fives followed by this
knight/Were beneficence boundless, and brother love/And pure mind and manners,
that none might impeach,/And compassion most precious...
10. And then, out of pure covetousness,
and in order to maintain her pride, she took up brewing, and was one of the
greatest brewers in the town of N for three or four years until she lost a
great deal of money, for she had never had any experience in that
business…suddenly the froth would go flat, and all the ale was lost in one
brewing after another, so that her servants were ashamed and would not stay
with her. Then this creature thought how God had punished her before—and she
could not take heed—
11. Arthur forgot him,/and none of his
men favored him either,/For his valor, for his generosity,/his beauty and his
bravery,/most men envied him; /some feigned the appearance of love/who, if
something unpleasant happened to him, would not have been at all disturbed.
12. As his woes became known widely and
well,/sad songs were sung by the sons of men:/how
season on season, with ceaseless strife…./The monster craved no kinship with
any,/no end to the evil with wergild owed;/nor might a king’s council have reckoned/on
quittance come from the killer’s hand./The dark death-shadow daunted them
all,/lying in ambush for old and young,/secretly slinking and stalking by
night.
13. Death is not easy to escape, let him
who will attempt it. Man must go to the
grave that waits him--fate has ordained this for all who have souls, children
of men, earth's inhabitants--and his body, rigid on its clay bed, will sleep
there after the banquet.
14. Early and late, I must undergo
hardship/because of the feud of my own dearest loved one./Men
forced me to live in a forest grove, under an oak tree in the earth-cave.
15. Enfolded in fire, he who formerly
/ruled a whole realm had no one to help him/hold off the heat, for his
hand-picked band/of princelings had fled, fearing to
face/the foe with their lord. Loving honor /less than their lives, they hid in
the holt.
16. For a long time now I have realized
that our religion is worthless; for the more diligently I sought the truth in
our cult, the less I found it. Now I
confess openly that the truth shines out clearly in this teaching which can
bestow on us the gift of life, salvation and eternal happiness.
17. For that is my belt about you, that
same braided girdle/My wife it was that wore it; I know well the tale,/And the
count of your kisses and your conduct too,/And the wooing of my wife--it was
all my scheme!
18. He knew the taverns well in every
town/And every innkeeper and barmaid too/Better than lepers, beggars and that
crew,/For in so eminent a man as he/It was not fitting with the dignity/Of his
position, dealing with a scum /Of wretched lepers…
19. I am sure/you don’t care for such
pleasure; /people have often told me/that you have no interest in women./You
have fine-looking boys /with whom to enjoy yourself./Base coward, lousy
cripple,/my lord made a bad mistake /when he let you stay with him.
20. I cannot sing; that is why I left
the feast and came here because I could not sing.
21. I saw his sleeves were garnished at
the hand/With fine grey fur, the finest in the land,/And on his hood, to fasten
it at his chin/He had a wrought-gold cunningly fashioned pin;/Into a lover’s
knot it seemed to pass. /His head was bald and shone like alooking-glass;/So did his face, as if it had been greased.
22. If there be one so willful my words
to assay,/Let him leap hither lightly, lay hold of this weapon;/I quitclaim it
forever, keep it as his own,/And I shall stand him a stroke, steady on this
floor,/So you grant me the guerdon to give him another.
23. It is fair that you seek to defend
us, my friend, /in return for the favor offered your father/when a killing
fanned the fiercest of feuds/after he felled the Wylfing,
Heatholaf…./I calmed your father’s quarrel with
wergild/sent over sea straight to the Wylfings,/an
ancient heirloom; and Ecgtheow’s oath/I took in
return.
24. It would soon be perceived plainly
by all/that one ill-wisher still was alive,/maddened by grief: Grendel’s mother,/a fearsome female bitterly brooding/alone
in her lair deep in dread waters/and cold currents since Cain had killed/the
only brother born of his father.
25. Jealous he was and kept her in the
cage,/For he was old and she was wild and young; He
thought himself quite likely to be stung./He might have known , were Cato on
his shelf,/A man should marry someone like himself; A man should pick an equal
for his mate. Youth and old age are often in debate..
26. My first desire is that we shall
still lie together in one bed as we have done before; the second, that you
shall pay my debts before you go to
27. My lord asked me to live with him
here;/I had few loved ones, loyal friends/in this
country; that is reason for grief.
28. Now sword-bestowing /and
gold-getting shall cease for the Geats. /You shall
have no joy in the homeland you love. /Your farms shall be forfeit, and each
man fare/alone and landless when foreign lords/learn of your flight, your
failure of faith./Better to die than dwell in
disgrace.
29. Now you and your dependents can no
longer delight/ in gifts of swords, or take pleasure in property,/ a happy home; but, after thanes from far and wide /have
heard of your flight, your shameful cowardice, /each of your male kinsmen will
be condemned /to become a wanderer, an exile deprived of the land he owns.
30. She let no morsel from her lips
fall/Nor wet her fingers in her deep sauce;/Well could
she carry a morsel, and well keep/That no drop fell upon her breast.
31. She made trial of a man most
faultless by far /Of all that ever walked over the wide earth;/As pearls to
white peas.../Yet you lacked, sir, a little in loyalty there,/But the cause was
not cunning, nor courtship either,/But that you loved your own life; the less,
then, to blame.
32. She who had lived in a terrible
lake/the cold water streams, after Cain slew/his own brother, his father's son,/with a sword; he was outlawed after that...
33. The brave man who gazed at Modthryth by day/might reckon a death-rope already
twisted,/might count himself quickly captured and killed,/the stroke of a sword
prescribed for his trespass./Such is no style for a queen to proclaim: /though
peerless, a woman ought to weave peace,/not snatch away life for imagined
slights.
34. The old night-scather/was
happy to glimpse the unguarded hoard./Balefully burning, he seeks out
barrows./Naked and hateful in a raiment of flame,/the dragon dreaded by outland
dwellers/must gather and guard the heathen gold,/no better for wealth but wise
with his winteres.
35. The weary in spirit cannot withstand
fate,/a troubled mind finds no relief:/wherefore these
eager for glory often/hold some ache imprisoned in their hearts.
36. Then he bore with her words and
withstood them no more,/and she repeated her petition
and pleaded anew,/And he granted it...
37. Then the sea-wolf dived to the
bottom-most depth, swept the prince to the place where she lived, so that he,
for all his courage, could not wield a weapon.
38. There is no one still to whom I dare
open/the door of my heart. I have no
doubt/that it is a noble habit for a man to /bind fast all his heart's
feelings, /guard his thoughts, whatever he is thinking.
39. Thus I had to bind my feelings in
fetters,/often sad at heart, cut off from my country,
/far from my kinsmen, after, long ago,/dark clods of earth covered my
gold-friend...
40. Where has the horse gone? Where the man? Where the giver of gold? /Where the feasting
place? And where the pleasures of the
hall?/I mourn for the gleaming cup, the warrior in his
corselet,/the glory of the prince.
41. Where is now your arrogance and your
awesome deeds,/Your valor and your victories and your
vaunting words?.../Overwhelmed with a word of one man's speech,/For all cower
and quake, and no cut felt!
42. Whoever has received knowledge/and
eloquence in speech from God/should not be silent or secretive/but demonstrate
it willingly.