Chaucer Translation: Welcome Summer

Welcome, Summer by Geoffrey Chaucer loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Now welcome, Summer, with your sun so soft, since you’ve banished Winter with her icy weather and driven away her long nights’ frosts. Saint Valentine, in the heavens aloft, the songbirds sing your praises together! Now welcome, Summer, with your sun so soft, since you’ve banished Winter with her icy weather. We have good cause to rejoice, not to scoff, since love’s in the air, and also in the heather, whenever we find such blissful warmth, together. Now welcome, Summer, with your sun so soft, since you’ve banished Winter with her icy weather and driven away her long nights’ frosts. Whoso List to Hunt by Sir Thomas Wyatt loose translation/interpretation/modernization by Michael R. Burch Whoever longs to hunt, I know the deer; but as for me, alas!, I may no more. This vain pursuit has left me so bone-sore I'm one of those who falters, at the rear. Yet friend, how can I draw my anguished mind away from the doe? Thus, as she flees before me, fainting I follow. I must leave off, therefore, since in a net I seek to hold the wind. Whoever seeks her out, I relieve of any doubt, that he, like me, must spend his time in vain. For graven with diamonds, set in letters plain, these words appear, her fair neck ringed about: "Touch me not, for Caesar's I am, And wild to hold, though I seem tame." Brut by Layamon, circa 1100 AD, an excerpt loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch Now he stands on a hill overlooking the Avon, seeing steel fishes girded with swords in the stream, their swimming days done, their scales a-gleam like gold-plated shields, their fish-spines floating like shattered spears. If you see a busker singing for tips, you're seeing someone carrying on an Anglo-Saxon tradition that goes back to the days of Beowulf … He sits with his harp at his thane's feet, Earning his hire, his rewards of rings, Sweeping the strings with his skillful nail; Hall-thanes smile at the sweet song he sings. —"Fortunes of Men" loose translation by Michael R. Burch Keywords/Tags: Chaucer, rondel, roundel, welcome, summer, sun, winter, weather, frost, songbirds, song, love, night, nights, ice, icy, heaven, heavens, sky, Wyatt, hunt, busker, thanes, Anglo-Saxon, Beowulf