Nothing by Design Read Online Free PDF Page B

nothing of how a wretch
    like me, in so much pain,
    could live a winter alone,
    exiled, on the ice-cold sea
    where hail came down in sheets,
    and icicles hung from me
    while friendly hall companions
    feasted far away.
    The crashing sea was all
    I heard, the ice-cold wave.
    I made the wild swan’s song
    my game; sometimes the gannet
    and curlew would cry out
    though elsewhere men were laughing;
    and the sea mew would sing
    though elsewhere men drank mead.
    Storms beat against the stone
    cliffs, and the ice-feathered
    tern called back, and often
    the sea-sprayed eagle too.
    No kinsman can console
    or protect a sorry soul.
    In fact, a city dweller
    who revels and swills wine
    far from travel’s perils,
    barely could believe
    how often, wearily,
    I weathered the sea paths.
    The shadows of night deepened,
    snow fell from the north,
    and on the frost-bound earth
    hail fell like the coldest grain.
    For all that, my heart’s thoughts
    pound now with the salt
    wave’s surging; on high seas
    my spirit urges me
    forward, to seek far
    from here a foreign land.
    The truth is that no man—
    however generous
    in gifts, however bold
    in youth, however brave,
    however loyally
    his own lord may attend him—
    is ever wholly free
    in his seafaring from worry
    at what is the Lord’s will.
    No, it is not for him,
    the harp’s song, nor the rings
    exchanged, nor pleasure in women,
    nor any worldly glory,
    nothing but welling waves;
    the longing of seagoing
    man is what he has.
    Groves break into blossom,
    the towns and fields grow fair
    and the world once more is new:
    all of this spurs on
    the man whose mind and spirit
    are eager for the journey,
    who yearns to steer his course
    far across the sea.
    Mournfully the cuckoo’s
    voice cries out in warning,
    the harbinger of summer
    bitterly foretells
    in song the soul’s distress.
    To the wealthy warrior
    blessed with worldly fortune,
    this is all unknown—
    what we face who follow
    the vast and alien way.
    And now my thought roams far
    beyond my heart; my mind
    flows out to the water,
    soars above the whale’s path
    to the wide world’s corners
    and returns with keen desire;
    the lone bird, flying, shrieks
    and leads the willing soul
    to the whale road, and over
    the tumbling of the waves.
    The joys of the Lord can kindle
    more in me than dead
    and fleeting life on land.
    I do not believe the riches
    of this world will last forever.
    Always, without fail,
    of three things one will turn
    uncertain for a man
    before his fatal hour:
    sickness, age, or the sword
    will rip the life right out
    of the doomed and done for.
    So it is for every man:
    the best praise will come after,
    from people who outlive him;
    today, then, he must toil
    against enemies and the Devil;
    undaunted he must dare
    so that sons of men extol him,
    that in time to come his fame
    endures amid the angels,
    and his glory goes on, ceaseless,
    among the celestial hosts.
    The days are dwindling now
    of the kingdoms of this earth;
    there are no kings or Caesars
    as before, and no gold givers
    as once, when men of valor
    performed great deeds and lived
    majestically among
    themselves in high renown.
    Their delights too are dead.
    The weakest hold the world
    in their hands, and wear it out
    with labor, while all splendor,
    like the earth, grows older;
    its noble aspect withers
    as man does everywhere.
    Age creeps up on him,
    his face grows pale; his head,
    gray-haired, bewails old friends,
    sons of princes, already
    given to the earth.
    As his body fails,
    life leaks away, he tastes
    sweetness in things no more,
    nor feels pain, nor can move
    his hand, nor use his mind.
    When a kinsman dies, he wants
    to strew the grave with gold,
    or bury with the dead
    treasures he amassed.
    But no, it cannot be;
    gold once hid and hoarded
    in life is no good now
    for the soul full of sin
    before the force of God.
    Terrible and great
    is the Lord, and the very world
    turns from Him in awe.
    He made the firm foundations,
    the earth’s face and