Here's a translation into Modern English (courtesy of wikipedia):
Now [we) must honour the guardian of heaven, the might of the architect, and his purpose, the work of the father of glory as he, the eternal lord, established the beginning of wonders. He, the holycreator, first created heaven as a roof for the children of men. Then the guardian of mankind, the eternal lord, the lord almighty, afterwards appointed the middle earth, the lands, for men. ---
Cædmon’s Hymn
By Cædmon (c. 657-681)
Cædmon was an Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch (657–681). Originally ignorant of the art of song, Cædmon learned to compose one night in the course of a dream. Cædmon’s only known surviving work is Cædmon’s Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of the Christian god he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language. (Summary from wikipedia)
Read by Kara Shallenberg; total running time: 00:01:39.
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Cover picture of a 9th Century Manuscript (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Annales_Xantenses.jpg).Copyright expired in US, Canada, EU and all countries with author’s life +70 yrs laws. Cover design by Janette Brown. This design is in the public domain.