The Attributes of a Gentleman
Chess I’m eager to play,
nine skills I know,
I scarcely forget runes,
book and handicraft are my custom,
I can glide on skis,
I shoot and row as will serve,
I know how to consider
both harp-playing and poetry.
Earl Rongvald Kali (St Ronald of Orkney) (d.1158)
Translated from the Old Norse by Paul Bibire. Image shows a statue of Rognvald Kali.
Gnome
Spend the years of learning squandering
Courage for the years of wandering
Through a world politely turning
From the loutishness of learning.
Samuel Beckett (1906 – 1989)
From The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse ed. Robert Crawford and Mick Imlah (Penguin:2000) and Samuel Beckett: Collected Poems In English and French (Grove Press:1977).
Two perspectives on cultural life. We read the twelfth-century Earl to glimpse a vanished world. In Beckett our own world looks back at us.
IM