Decameron 1.4

In the not so far–off shire of Lunigiana, there formerly blossomed a brotherhood of monks more manifold and holy than there is to be found today. Among them was a young brother whose liveliness and drive neither fasts nor wakes could work to quell.

The Night Before Christmas

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a wight was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the hearth with care,
In the hope that Saint Nicholas soon would be there;

Caesar’s Gaulish War

The whole of Gaul is split into three shares: in one dwells the Belga, another the Aquitans, and in the third those which in their own tongue are called Celts, but in ours, Gauls. All these other from each in their speech, ways, and laws.

Mandeville’s Farings

Sheaf 20: Of the wicked ways kept in the iland of Lamory; and how the earth and the sea are ball–shaped, witnessed by the star called South Star, which is set in the south.

From [India] men go by the great sea Ocean through many ilands and sundry lands, of which it would take too long to tell. At last, after fifty–three days of faring, they come to a land, big and great, which is called Lamory. In this land it is amazingly hot, and it is the way there that men and women go about all naked, unashamed to show themselves as God made them. They look down upon clothes, for they say that God made Adam and Eve naked, and man should be unashamed of what God has made, for nothing inborn is dirty. They also say that man which wear clothes are from another world, or else they do not believe in God that made this world.

Catullus 101

Borne through many lands and many seas,
I come, brother, to these sorrowful blessings,
So that I might bestow you with the last gift of death,
And speak idly to your still ashes,
Since doom has stolen you yourself from me.
Woe, wretched brother stolen unworthily from me!
For the while, however, take these which in the old ways of our forebears,
Were handed down as a sad gift for blessings in death,
Sodden with brotherly tears,
And forever, brother, hail and farewell.

The Reckoning by John Donne

For my first twenty years, since yesterday,
I bare believed thou couldst be gone away;
For forty more I fed on kindness gone,
And forty on hopes thou wouldst it might go on;
Tears drown’d one hundred, and sighs blew out two;
A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not sunder, all being one thought of you;
Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life; but think that I
Am, by being dead, undying; can ghosts die?

Charles Darwin—On the Arising of Kinds

When on board HMS Beagle, as wildlorer, I was much struck with some truths in the spread of living things in South America, and the links in stonelore between the dwellers now and bygone of that mainland. These truths, as will be seen in the latter sheaves of this book, seemed to throw some light on how kinds arise—that riddle of riddles, as it has been called by one of our greatest thinkers. On my coming home, it came to me, in 1837, that something may be made out on this asking by steadily gathering and thinking upon all kinds of truths which might have any bearing on it. After five years’ work I let myself cast thoughts along this line, and drew up some short writs; these I greatened in 1844 into a sketch of the outcomes, which then seemed to me likely: from that time til now I have steadily sought the same goal. I hope that I may be forgiven for bringing forth these words about my own life, as I give them to show that I have not been rash in coming to the belief I have chosen.

Oversetting Darwin 2

Following from my post of only a few days ago, I wish to offer up the whole sentence from which the snippet was taken. Below, as before, is Darwin’s original, follow by three oversettings. The only difference is that the last version, which is mine, now has a name to overset Origin of Species.

Oversetting Darwin

Having enjoyed taking part in oversetting games recently, I was rather happy to unexpectedly find myself taking part in another. I wanted to do a scientific work so that I would be faced with harder words to overset, and so chose Darwin’s The Origin of Species. I am not the first to have had such a thought, however, and there are two other attempts at it on The Anglish Moot: a full oversetting called On the Fromth of Lifekin, and a short bit of the introduction as The Wellspring of Breedstocks.

The Green Knight (First 8 Stanzas)

Listen! When Arthur was king,
He had all at his bidding
The island of Britain.
England and Scotland were one,
And Wales too was likewise done,
The truth can not be hidden.