Table of Contents
Anglo-Saxon Lyric Poetry
Anglo-Saxon
lyric poetry focuses on the subjectivity of the life of the Anglo-Saxon
people- their lifestyle, courage, sea-voyage, hunting, pagan belief,
love of Nature etc. The Anglo-Saxon Elegiac Poetry bears the
theme of lamentation of loss and death. Like lyric poetry, elegy also conveys
the message of personal emotions, feelings and sentiments of the poet. The
notable lyric and elegiac poems of the Anglo-Saxon period or Old English period
include The Wanderer, The Seafarer, The Wife’s Lament, The Husband’s Message,
Wulf and Eadmacer and The Ruin.
1. The Wanderer
This
is the story of a young thegn who has formerly known happiness but now after
the death of his lord, he wanders about in search of another protector beyond
the seas. In the second part, we find a note of calm acceptance and a more
mature outlook. The speaker laments:
“Here
possessions are transient, here friends are transient, here man is transient,
here the woman is transient, all this firm-set earth becomes empty”.
The
poem ends on a conventional Christian note that good is the man who does not
lose his faith in God.
Also, Skim:
2. Deor’s Lament Analysis
Disintegrators
claim that there are actually three speakers, but it has now been established
that there is only one who at the end of the poem is resigned to the fact of
universal mutability.
2. The Seafarer
This
poem of 120 lines preserved in the Exeter Book, is by far the most
original Anglo-Saxon lyric. It is apparently a dialogue between a veteran
mariner describing the lonely sufferings of life at sea, and a youth, eager to
brave the dangers of the waters. But the poem may very well be the monologue of
an old seaman who, though remembering the sufferings at sea, yet has a restless
spirit and a pagan fascination for a sailor’s life. A feeling of contempt for
earthly luxuries and his yearning to set forth on the voyage led him to think
of future life and the fleeting nature of earthly joys.
The
poem may also be an allegory of human life which is seen as a sea. There are a
large number of seascapes with a haunting beauty of their own. This deep
attraction for the life of a mariner is found later in the poetry of Byron,
Kipling, Masefield etc.
3. The Wife’s Lament
This
is perhaps one of the earliest English love poems. The manuscript is preserved in
the Exeter Book. It is an elegiac lament of a woman separated from her husband
and banished to the wilderness by the foe. Full of the despair of separation,
the wife tears her passion to tatters and calls down a curse upon the foe,
praying that he may know the misery of exile and loneliness. She pines for her
former days of warm conjugal love. The poet here successfully presents the
passionate yearning of a loving and distressed heart.
4. The Husband’s Message
This
too is preserved in the Exeter Book. It is probably a sequel to the
former poem. The poem is in the form of a message engraved on a wooden tablet
which comes to assure the waiting wife of her husband’s love. He has prepared a
new home for her abroad and calls on her to sail there in the spring when the
cuckoo would sing. The husband is probably in exile in some foreign land from
where he assures her of his love and devotion to her. The runic letters at the end
of the poem are perhaps a kind of secret sign from the husband understood by
the wife.
5. Wulf and Eadwacer
This
poem of 18 lines is formed in the Exeter Book immediately preceding The Riddles
and there was a view that this was a riddle itself. It is probably a dramatic
monologue. The speaker is a woman and apparently a captive in a foreign land.
She longs for Wulf, her outlawed lover. Her husband Eadwacer is tyrannical and
she entreats Wulf to save her from her present distress. Intensely personal, it
is one of the earliest English poems to have a pronounced amorous bent,
6. The Ruin or the Ruined Berg
This
is an elegy on a ruined city with crumbling walls and departed glory. The city
is conjectured to be a ruined Roman city such as Bath with its hot springs. The
poet then turns to contemplate the general mutability of things. The Ruin is an
elegy with a difference as it mourns not the death or misfortune of a person
but of a ruined city Full of nostalgia and eloquent sorrow, this is one of the
greatest Old English elegiac poems.
The Charms contain much Old English
superstition and folklore and have definite poetic elements.
The Riddles are poetical descriptions of
particular objects with their true identity concealed.
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