Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Alliterative verse, Short lyric
Medieval English lyrics: "Wanne mine eyhnen misten" (When my eyes mist over) Reading and analysis
Too late for what? In a world dominated by belief in the afterlife, the answer is clear — too late to amend a wicked life, too late to prepare for what comes next. The poem moves from deathbed to floor to shroud to bier to the grave, where the dead person will be shut up with "myn hus vppe min nose" — my house upon my nose. And at the end, the poet concludes that nothing in this world is worth more than a pea.
Yet the poem is also, in its way, a call to action. The narrator imagines all this in the future — it is not yet too late for the reader. As life slips into death in the poem, so the narrator's fate becomes the reader's own. This is medieval didactic poetry at its most visceral and most human.
0:00 Introduction
0:10 A reading of the medieval text
1:12 A reading in modern English
2:16 An analysis
My medieval playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSgwvphXmdI&list=PLzVb6yL_jY69N9G5BqcTQdlGbwWRw2Yf-&index=1
If your language is not included in the subtitles, let me know and I will add it.
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4 Comments
Love your videos. Can’t believe it took me 3 years for your content to come up!
So glad you found it & liked it!
I love these videos! I wish you would in a better microphone.
Thank you for the feedback! I wish I knew what to do. I use either a Yeti Nano mike or the built-in mike in my Canon Eos video camera. They’re both supposed to be reasonably good. I’m going a bit deaf, so I’m not the best judge myself, but it sounds reasonable on my system, and I just don’t know what’s wrong!