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Wanderer "Wanderer Is The Translator's Choice For Words That Literally Would Be "Man Alone" (L. 1) and

The Wanderer reflects on his exile and loss of his lord and kin. He recalls wandering homeless over wintry seas, seeking a lord who could provide comfort for his grief. In his dreams he sees his lost lord and kinsmen, but awakens to loneliness. No man can know wisdom until experiencing many winters, and a wise man remains patient and moderate rather than swift to anger or reckless. The wanderer ponders how the world's wealth and mighty structures will decay and fall, leaving only ruins, as warriors pass into darkness. Fate transforms the world, and all earthly things are fleeting compared to taking refuge in God.

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108 views5 pages

Wanderer "Wanderer Is The Translator's Choice For Words That Literally Would Be "Man Alone" (L. 1) and

The Wanderer reflects on his exile and loss of his lord and kin. He recalls wandering homeless over wintry seas, seeking a lord who could provide comfort for his grief. In his dreams he sees his lost lord and kinsmen, but awakens to loneliness. No man can know wisdom until experiencing many winters, and a wise man remains patient and moderate rather than swift to anger or reckless. The wanderer ponders how the world's wealth and mighty structures will decay and fall, leaving only ruins, as warriors pass into darkness. Fate transforms the world, and all earthly things are fleeting compared to taking refuge in God.

Uploaded by

Burcu Kılınç
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Wanderer1

1Oft to the wanderer, weary of exile,


Cometh God's pity,

compassionate love,

Though woefully toiling


5

on wintry seas

With churning oar in the icy wave,


Homeless and helpless he fled from Fate.2
Thus saith the Wanderer mindful of misery,
Grievous disasters, and death3 of kin:
Oft when the day broke, oft at the dawning,

10

Lonely and wretched I wailed my woe.


No man is living, no comrade left,
To whom I dare fully unlock my heart.
I have learned truly the mark of a man
Is keeping his counsel4 and locking his lips,
Let him think what he will! For, woe of heart
not Fate: a falling5 spirit

15Withstandeth

Earneth no help. Men eager for honor


Bury their sorrow deep in the breast.
'So have I also, often in wretchedness
Fettered my feelings, far from my kin,
1 Wanderer Wanderer is the translators choice for words that literally would be man alone (l. 1) and
earth-walker (l.6)
2 Fate The translation of wyrd as Fate deserves comment because of basic etymologic differences.
Fate is from a Latin root connected with speaking: that which has been decreed by the gods; wyrd is
connected with the word for become and so literally means what comes to pass in the broadest context
or, applied to men or to a single man, the human lot, the state of change to which all are subject except
God and the angels
3 death by violence
4 Keeping. . . counsel According to Tacitus, in his Germania, the Germanic peoples held that a woman
may decently express her grief in public; a man should nurse his in his heart.
5 failing Another translation is fierce, to make a contrasting pair i.e. neither sorrow nor anger will
availrather than a repetitive pair.

20Homeless

and hapless, since days of old,

When the dark earth covered my dear lord's face,


And I sailed away with sorrowful heart,
Over wintry seas, seeking a gold-lord,6
25With

If far or near lived one to befriend me


gift in the mead-hall and comfort for grief.
Who bears it, knows what a bitter companion,
ShouIder to shoulder, sorrow can be,
When friends are no more. His fortune is exile,

30

Not gifts of fine gold; a heart that is frozen,


Earth's winsomeness dead. And he dreams of the hall-men,
The dealing of treasure, the days of his youth,
When his lord bade welcome to wassail and feast.
But gone is that gladness, and never again

35

Shall come the loved counsel of comrade and king.


Even in slumber his sorrow assaileth,
And, dreaming he claspeth his dear lord again,
Head on knee, hand on knee, loyally laying.
Pledging his liege7 as in days long past.

Then from his slumber he starts lonely-hearted.


40Beholding gray stretches of tossing sea,
Sea-birds bathing. with wings outspread.
While hailstorms darken, and driving snow.
Bitterer then is the bane of his wretchedness,
45

The longing for loved one: his grief is renewed.


The forms of his kinsmen take shape in the silence;
In rapture he greets them; in gladness he scans
Old comrades remembered. But they melt into air
With no word of greeting to gladden his heart.
Then again surges his sorrow upon him;

6 good-lord a generous giver of gold and gifts, who would take him into his household.
7 Head . . . liege making his profession of allegiance.

50

And grimly he spurs his weary soul


Once more to the toil of the tossing sea.
No wonder8 therefore, in all the world,
If a shadow darkens upon my spirit

55How

When I reflect on the fates of menone by one proud warriors vanish


From the halls that knew them, and day by day
All this earth ages and droops unto death.
No man may know wisdom till many a winter

60

Has been his portion. A wise man is patient.


Not swift to anger. nor hasty of speech.
Neither too weak,9 nor too reckless, in war,
Neither fearful nor fain,10 nor too wishful of wealth,
Nor too eager in vow ere he know the event.

A brave man must bide when he speaketh his boast


65Until he know surely the goal of his spirit.
A wise man will ponder how dread is that doom
When all this world's wealth shall be scattered and waste
As now, over all, through the regions of earth,
70

Walls stand rime-covered and swept by the winds.


The battlements crumble, the wine-halls decay;
Joyless and silent the heroes are sleeping
Where the proud host fell by the wall they defended.
Some battle launched on their long, last journey;
One a bird11 bore o'er the billowing sea;

8 no wonder Some scholars see a break here, with a second speaker, not the Wanderer but the sage or
wise man of l.103, taking up the tale. A case can be made for this reading of the poem, but it is not
necessary to make the divison.
9 weak unreliable
10 fain probably fawning, servile
11 bird No completely convincing explanation has yet been offered of the bird; perhaps it is the eagle or
the raven, feeding upon corpses, a common occurrence in the battle scenes of Anglo-Saxon literature.

75One

the gray wolf slew; one a grieving eorl12


Sadly gave to the grave's embrace.
The Warden of men hath wasted this world
Till the sound of music and revel is stilled,

80

And these giant-built structures13 stand empty of life.


He who shall muse on these moldering ruins,
And deeply ponder this darkling life,
Must brood on old legends of battle and bloodshed,
And heavy the mood that troubles his heart:

'Where now is the warrior?14 Where is the war horse?


85Bestowal of treasure, and sharing of feast?
Alas! the bright ale-cup, the byrny-clad warrior,
The prince in his splendor15 -those days are long sped
In the night of the past, as if they never had been!'
And now remains only, for warriors' memorial,
wondrous high with serpent shapes16 carved.

90A wail

Storms of ash-spears17 have smitten the earls,


Carnage of weapon, and conquering fate.
Storms now batter these ramparts of stone;
Blowing snow and the blast of winter
12 eorl warrior
13 giant-built tructures usually taken to be Roman ruins, buildings of the great men of far-off times
14 Where . . . warrior This brief ubi sunt lament, a further variation on the theme of transitoriness, on
which the poem turns, is an echo of Latin homiletic and other works, applied to the thing that the warrior
prizes most.
15 splendour i.e. as the center of the heroic community
16 serpent shapes No architecture survives which would answer to this description; the nearest
approaches are in Celtic minor art, the interlace patterns of Anglo-Saxon cross-shafts, metal work such as
the Sutton Hoo buckle, or the Fetter-Lane sword pommel, all of which are on a much smaller scale
17 ash-spears aesc, from the wood of which the shaft was made, one of the two normal names for a spear

95Enfold

the earth; night-shadows fall

Darkly lowering, from the north driving


Raging hall in wrath upon men.
Wretchedness fills the realm of earth,
100

And Fate's decrees transform the world.


Here wealth is fleeting, friends are fleeting,
Man is fleeting, maid is fleeting;
All the foundation of earth shall fail!
Thus spake the sage In solitude pondering.

105

Good man is he who guardeth his faith.


He must never too quickly unburden his breast
Of its sorrow, but eagerly strive for redress;
And happy the man who seeketh for mercy
From his heavenly Father, our Fortress18 and Strength.

18 Fortress See Proverbs 18:10, Psalms 17:2 for the notion of God as a fortress; Luthers feste Burg is a
later example.

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