Excerpt from The History of Early English Literature: Being the History of English Poetry From Its Beginnings to the Accession of King AlfredA translation made in any one of our existing rhyming metres seemed to me as much out of the question as a prose translation. None of these metres resemble those of Anglo Saxon poetry, and, moreover, their associations would modern ise the old English thought. An anglo-saxon king in modern Court dress would not look more odd and miserable than an anglo-saxon poem in a modern rhyming metre. Blank verse is another matter. It frequently comes near to the short epic line of Cynewulf, but it fails in the elasticity which a translation of anglo-saxon poetry requires, and in itself is too stately, even in its feminine dramatic forms, to represent the centering movement of old English verse. Moreover, it is weighted with the sound of Shakspere, Milton, or Tennyson, and this association takes the reader away from the atmosphere of early English poetry. I felt myself then driven to invent a rhythmical movement which would enable me, while trans lating literally, to follow the changes, and to express, with some little approach to truth, the proper ebb and ¿ow of anglo-saxon verse.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.