The Ruin
Lisa Firke recalls her first encounter with one of the oldest of Anglo-Saxon poems.
"I first found this book while babysitting, so I was at most sixteen. The parents had a wonderful study where the wood was all oiled and the books marched up every wall to the ceiling. I don't know how I happened to notice The Earliest English Poems , a small, slender volume, but I read it straight through after my charge went to bed. "
Bright were the buildings, halls where springs ran,
high, horngabled, much throng-noise;
these many meadhalls men filled
with loud cheerfulness: Wierd changed that.