I've always loved "The Ruin," a damaged Anglo-Saxon poem from the Exeter Book. I had occasion to revisit it in April 2021, and I decided to translate it again, for my own pleasure and to help me think through some writing I was doing for The Lost Tales of Sir Galahad. I share it here in hopes that it may amuse and/or edify you.
You can see the original Anglo-Saxon and a different translation of it at this wikipedia page.
The castle burst; its giant-work crumbles.
Roofs have fallen, towers lie in ruin.
The frostgate is riven, rime on lime,
The storm-refuge in shards, shorn to disaster,
Eaten from beneath by age. Earth’s grip holds
The castle’s mighty makers, withered and gone.
Soil's hard grasp will hold them until a hundred generations
Of mankind have passed. Oft this wall endured,
Lichen-grey and red of hue, in one kingdom after another;
It held up under storms: Steep, lofty, lost.
It crumbles still, the ...s heaped up
Abide...
Grimly ground ...
... shone, they ...
... clever work, ancient ...
... a ring of dried mud ...
mind ... swift, crafty,
Determined in rings, bound the high roof
A wire-helmed wall, ingeniously joined.
Bright were the castle-halls, many bath-houses,
High treasure-horns, great troop-sounds,
Many meadhalls, full of men's joy,
Until that was turned severely by Fate.
The battle-felled ranged wide, the pestilence-days came.
Death carried off rough and ready swordsmen;
Their battlegrounds became abandoned wastes.
The castle crumbled; its repairers themselves crumpled to the ground.
Thus, these houses have collapsed,
And the red arch is sundered from the tiles,
The pillared-vault's roof. It has all collapsed,
Broken to bits, where many a warrior,
Glad-minded and gold-bright, gleamingly adorned,
Proud and wine-brave, shone in battle-array.
He looked at loot, at silver, at stunning gems,
At wealth, at possessions, at goblet-stones,
At the bright fortress of a broad kingdom.
The stonecastle stood, streams brought heat,
A wide spring. A wall surrounded it all,
Its bright bosom, where the baths were,
Hot in its heart. That was convenient.
They let it out...
Over grey stone the hot streams
Un- ...
... that ring-pool hot...
... where the baths were ...
Then is ...
...-re; That is a kingly thing
How the ... castle ...
