I turned it into English verse in thirty-one different metres, each being as nearly as I could manage in the rhythm of the original:  there were no rhymes in those days; alliteration was the only sort of jingle:  in the judgment of Mr. Fox and some other Anglo-Saxon critics my version was fairly close, and for the poetical part of my own production at least nothing is of the slipshod order of half rhymes or alternate prose and verse—­too common, especially in our hymnology—­but honest double rhyming throughout.  Without transcribing the little volume I could not give a true idea of it:  but here shall come three or four samples:—­

    “Lo, I sang cheerily
      In my bright days,—­
    But now all wearily
      Chaunt I my lays,—­
    Sorrowing tearfully,
      Saddest of men,
    Can I sing cheerfully
      As I could then?” &c. &c.

Here is a verse of another:—­

    “O Thou that art Maker of heaven and earth,
    Who steerest the stars, and hast given them birth,
    For ever thou reignest upon Thy high throne,
    And turnest all swiftly the heavenly zone,” &c.

Yet another:—­

    “What is a man the better,
      A man of worldly mould,
    Though he be gainful getter
      Of richest gems and gold,
    With every kind well filled
      Of goods in ripe array,
    And though for him be tilled
      A thousand fields a day?” &c.

Again:—­

    “I have wings like a bird, and more swiftly can fly
    Far over this earth to the roof of the sky,
    And now must I feather thy fancies, O mind,
    To leave the mid earth and its earthlings behind,” &c.

And for a last word:—­

    “Thus quoth Alfred—­’If thou growest old
    And hast no pleasure, spite of weal and gold,
    And goest weak,—­then thank thy Lord for this,
    That He hath sent thee hitherto much bliss,
    For life and light and pleasures past away;
    And say thou, Come and welcome, come what may.’”

These are little bits taken casually:  to each of the poems I have added suitable comment in prose.  Mr. Bohn in his well-known series has added my verse to Mr. Fox’s prose Boethius.

The Anglo-Saxon preface to that volume commences thus:  “Alfred, King, was the translator of this book:  and from book-Latin turned it into Old English, as it is now done.  Awhile he put word for word; awhile sense for sense.  He learned this book, and translated it for his own people, and turned it into song, as it is now done.”  His Old English song, that is, Anglo-Saxon alliteration, is all now modernised in this curious little book of English metres.  It was well praised by many critics; but at present is out of the market.  When I am “translated” myself, all these old works of mine will rise again in a voluminous complete edition.

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