Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Durham

Durham

By Anglo-Saxon Poem

THIS city is celebrated

In the whole empire of the Britons.

The road to it is steep.

It is surrounded with rocks,

And with curious plants.

The Wear flows round it,

A river of rapid waves;

And there live in it

Fishes of various kinds,

Mingling with the floods.

And there grow

Great forests;

There live in the recesses

Wild animals of many sorts;

In the deep valleys

Deer innumerable.

There is in this city

Also well known to men

The venerable St. Cudberth;

And the head of the chaste King

Oswald, the lion of the Angli;

And Aiden, the Bishop:

Aedbert and Aedfrid,

The noble associates.

There is in it also

Aethelwold, the Bishop;

And the celebrated writer Bede;

And the Abbot Boisil,

By whom the chaste Cudberth

Was in his youth gratis instructed;

Who also well received the instructions.

There rest with these saints,

In the inner part of the Minster,

Relicks innumerable,

Which perform many miracles,

As the chronicles tell us,

And which await with them

The judgment of the Lord.