I just added a translation of the Vercelli Book’s version of “Soul & Body” [called S&B I by Krapp]. The text is slightly different from the Exeter Book version (II), adding about thirty or so lines at the end, and other throughout. Numerous different words are there as well. I tried to carefully collate the two versions and keep them straight. Several errors or skipped words were corrected in the Exeter Book version as well.
Great Resource. I have a translation of Caedmon’s Hymn that I did with Jesse Bessinger at NYU in 1970. But four dead with Ohio interrupted the flow a bit and I graduated that year. Don’t know what your parameters are as to style. My translation substantially imitates the sound and the caesura’s of the original. Jesse and I were in a discussion on the translation of h?leg scepen. Jesse insisting on creator. I trying to make something like Holy Masterbuilder (Ibsenish) or Holy Shaper. Both being awkward. This of course led to a whole discussion of what “weard” both means and its world soul aspects of meaning. And of course whether I can in good conscious revert Warden to ward and then use the dependent meaning of ward in the second stanza.
So for the two reasons state above (sound and caesura) + my resolution of Weard, I offer my 1970 translation.
Now shall we praise heavens greatest ward
Our makers might and his molding thought
As a wondrous beginning he, eternal, brought.
He first built for the children men bear
Heaven as a roof Holy Master Builder
Then middle earth mankind’s ward
He, eternal, after adorned its face for men
Father Almighty.
The comment box stripped my 3 blank caesura indications in my previous comment.