What is meant by the term 'whale's acre' in Ezra Pound's modern English version of "The Seafarer"

[Octagon]

What is meant by the term ‘whale’s acre’ in Ezra Pound’s modern English version of “The Seafarer”?

Is it simply a metaphor for the ocean? I couldn’t find a definition for it.

[Kimstu]

It helps to compare translations.

Here’s a more direct translation of that passage:

Swylce geac monað Now the cuckoo warns
geomran reorde; with her mournful voice;
singeð sumeres weard, the guardian of summer sings,
sorge beodeð boding sorrows
bitter in breosthord. bitter to the breast-hoard.

Þæt se beorn ne wat, This the normal man knows not,
sefteadig secg, the warrior lucky in worldly things,
hwæt þa sume dreogað unaware of what others endure,
þe þa wræclastas those who brave most extensively
widost lecgað. earth’s exile-paths.

Forþon nu min hyge hweorfeð Now my spirit soars
ofer hreþerlocan, out of my breast,
min modsefa my mind floods
mid mereflode, amid the waterways
ofer hwæles eþel over the whale-path;
hweorfeð wide, it soars widely
eorþan sceatas— through all the far reaches of the earth—

Here is Pound’s:

Cuckoo calleth with gloomy crying,
He singeth summerward, bodeth sorrow,
The bitter heart’s blood. Burgher knows not —
He the prosperous man — what some perform
Where wandering them widest draweth.
So that but now my heart burst from my breast-lock,
My mood 'mid the mere-flood,
Over the whale’s acre, would wander wide.

So yeah, this is just Pound’s version of a very typical Old English kenning of the form “whale-road”, “whale-path” etc. to mean the ocean.

[Octagon]

Thanks Kimstu.