Classical German Poems: Early Middle Ages

[Complementing the previously posted 20th-century translations, in the next few weeks I will be posting my translations of selected ‘Classical’ German poems from the early Middle Ages to the nineteenth centuries. The selections are again simply based on their personal poetic/imaginative appeal. We start with an early-Medieval apocalypse and a travel blessing. Image is a detail from Giotto’s late-Medieval Last Judgement from 1306.]

From: Muspilli (early ninth century)

[A poetic sermon on the end of the world in older alliterative verse with later rhymes, probably after an Anglo-Saxon original; description of the final struggle between Elias and the Anti-Christ; meaning of title unknown but of pagan origin and also occurs in the Edda; written in the Carolingian era around the time when the Church was missionising and ‘re-educating’ the pagan German tribes under Emperor Karl der Grosse/Charlemagne]

[…]

Then Elias’ blood shall drip to the ground,
then shall the mountains catch fire, no single tree
on earth remain standing, the rivers dry out,
the moors disappear, the sky smoulder,
the moon fall down, man’s middle earth
shall burn, no stone remain standing.

Then shall come Judgement Day to the land
with fires seeking men. Then no kinsman
can be helped for the end of the world
will have come. Then the broad good land,
all will be burnt, by fire, by wind, all destroyed.

Where is then the marker post where men fought
their kinsmen? The post is burnt, the soul stands
oppressed and knows not how to make amends.
And so it goes to its punishment […]

‘Weingarten Travel Blessing’ (tenth century)

[A composite piece of which only the first part is given here, from a manuscript at the Weingarten monastery in Württemberg]

I watch you as you go, I send after you
with my five fingers five-and-fifty angels.

God with health bring you home.

May the gate of victory be open,
and the gate of good fortune too.

Closed for you may be the gate of flood,
and the gate of warfare too. […]