Life of Love
(An analysis of the three messages portrayed by the Exeter poems)
As we go through life there are many questions that you may have. These questions can range from what is life, to what is love. There are many different answers that can come from these questions. In the Exeter Book there are three different poems. The first poem is The Seafarer, in this poem the speaker is out at sea. He is in the middle of a storm, and he does not believe that he is going to return home. The next poem is The Wanderer, here the speaker is now homeless. He was once a great warrior who had lost it all. The final poem is The Wife’s Lament, in this poem a wife is exiled by her husband. She is sent away and told to not come back. The Seafarer,
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The speaker of this poem is away at sea. He fears that he is never going to return home. “But there isn’t a man on earth so proud, so born to greatness, so bold with his youth, grown so brave, or so graced by God, that he feels no fear as the sails unfurl, wondering what fate has willed and will do.” (The Seafarer, pg. 22, lines 39-43). Here the speaker of the poem says that even though he may not live through his journey that he must stay faithful in what God has in store for him. He says that he must not fear what is going on. Even though everything looks as though it is against him he cannot lose all faith. If he was to lose faith and give up there would be hell to pay. Just because things do not look good you must stay optimistic and keep a cool head and stay …show more content…
In this poem the speaker is being exiled by her own husband. The man she once loved for some unknown reason was kicking her to the curb. “I had few loved ones in this land or faithful friends. For this my heart grieves: that I should find the man well matched to me…” (The Wife’s Lament, pg. 30, lines 16-19). Here the wife who is being exiled wishes that she had more people that loved her. It is important that she has people that she loves and that love her in order for her to keep herself from the fate ahead. Without love she has no one and no support. Love does not have to come from the opposite sex, but it can be found in friends that are close to us. If we do not have love we feel as though we are outcasts to the world around us. Love is what ties us into those who mean the most to us. Love is one of the most important feelings we can portray to one
It is important to note that the first eight lines are a part of a single sentence. This is important because it means that if we remove the repeated poetic verse found within these lines, we discover that Millay is simply saying “Love is not all… / Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone” (1-8) . This is a justifiable conclusion because after the words “Love is not all” the author uses a colon, which means that the lines following are simply a definition for what she means by “Love is not all” (1) . When put in such simple terms, it’s easy to see how this is almost indistinguishable from saying, “Love is not all, but it would be better to be dead than not have it.”
In the Anglo-Saxon epic poems “The Wife’s Lament,” “The Wanderer,” and “The Seafarer,” the authors make their poetry much more interesting and enjoyable by inserting literary devices that add meaning and cohesiveness to each line. Each poem contains multiple literary devices such as kennings, caesuras, and imagery. These tools work together in order to add mood and transparency to the poetry.
“The seafarer” by an anonymous anglo saxon scop focuses on personal torment. He is a who questions his life everyday wondering why he does this longing to find the answers. He remembers why he sils on the sea he loves the sight of land on the horizon seeking new shores and new adventures. The first section starts off with the seafarer talking about his constant internal conflict between sea and land. He hates that he is never home for his wife.
In the nineteenth century women of dignity and grace married men who could provide enough money so that the she could “go housekeeping”. Marriage wasn’t a bond of unity and love, in most cases it was an agreement of sorts that the groom would provide stability to his bride and she intern would provide meals and a clean home. Eunice’s life did not go according to the plan that she or anyone else had imagined for a respectable, middle-class New England woman. In contrast she did transect many of the stereotypes for low-class, immigrant women.
When isolated from society, loneliness becomes a part of you. In the poems, The Wife’s Lament translated by Ann Stanford and The Seafarer translated by Burton Raffel, are two similar and different poems. The characters in these poems handle their exiles in different ways. The way the two characters reflect from their exile is based off Anglo-Saxon values and beliefs. These poems compare and contrast the exile between men and women.
Exploring Different Types of Love in Three Poems: A Woman to Her Lover, When We Two Parted and First Love
To emphasize the significance of love to a human being’s survival, the poem begins with the many aspects that love isn’t capable of. By stating the ways love is useless in providing as a necessity of life, the speaker is able to persuade the reader(s) that it serves no real purpose. Displaying the a b a parts of a Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme, love “is not meat or drink nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; nor yet a floating spar to men that sink,” (Millay 1-3) it holds no practical value. It can’t provide you with food and shelter you from nature or even help you to survive. In other words, these stanzas connected the image of love to an idea of uselessness in surviving.
Another recurring theme that the author points out is fate and the journey to the afterlife. In the poem, God represents fate itself, controlling people’s destiny”No man has ever faced the dawn certain which of fate’s three threats would fall: illness, or age, or an enemy’s sword, snatching the life from his soul.” (lines 68-71). The author is saying that nothing is going to change our fate, and we should be fine with that.
Even Though love can be the strongest bond between two people it can also be the destroying factor in one's life. Physical and emotional desires are a driving necessity and even sometimes a deciding factor in one's love life. Every human is different and will experience many different things in their ever evolving love discovery. In Minot’s poem we see a women who will climb any obstacle or fight any burden in order to be with her husband.
The point of view in Literature is defined as a position or perspective from which something is considered or evaluated. Point of View has a strong influence on any piece of written work. The Seafarer is an Anglo-Saxon poem, written by an unknown author. The narrator analyzes his life while exploring the depths of the sea. The Wife’s Lament, which is also an Anglo-Saxon poem, is told by the narrator, who is the wife of a man who leaves his country.
First of all, in “The Seafarer” the writer discusses the internal conflicts he is having among the waves of the sea. Even though this self-chosen exile causes this man pain and sorrow, peace is not a common entity for him while on land. “The time for journeys would come and my soul/ called me eagerly out, sent me over/ the horizon, seeking foreigners’ homes.” (lines 36-38). The gallant mortal does not doubt that there is no fear among his heart, but his longing for the tides is far too strong to be confined to the dry, lifeless land. His experiences only bring him back to where he feels at home the most - the sea. “But there isn’t a man on earth so proud,/…/he feels no fear as the sails unfurl/…/only the ocean’s heave; But longing wraps itself around him.” (lines 39-47). The way he shows his fearful arrogance is an example again of his internal conflict.
It's fair to say that both of these poems portray very similar situations. Each tells a story of a man, exiled from his homeland, struggling to accept their fate and put their old lives behind them. It shows their struggle while traveling alone, and gives you a deeper look into their emotional states. In the end, they both preach their faith in the lord, reflecting the anglo-saxon society, who had christian values. On the other hand, while the wife in “The Wife’s Lament” isn't setting out to sea herself, she is left behind by those she loved. “I a woman tell since I grew up never more than now. The dark of my exile.” It's clear that she still feels the same effects and misery of exile as the Wanderer and the narrator in “The Seafarer”. In relation to these poems, I believe it makes sense to compare the sea to human existence. In the poem’s the moods of the speakers are never certain and constantly changing. They all tell their stories of being exiled, yet continue to dwell on the life that they once had. They all experience up and downs, the same way we do everyday. They eventually come to realize that the good times won't last forever, and that they must accept the fate that man has given to them. The speakers are showing that it's okay to question the world and the amount of power that god holds, but that we should accept the fact that out fate has already been chosen for us.
I interpreted this poem as a very sad one. A love unrequited by the pursued. In the first two lines the poem tells you to forget about the love you share and hear a tale of this. Not to literally forget, but possibly put aside. The man is a winter breeze, cold and rough and sort of roams the land. The woman is a window flower, shut off from the outside. This sets up the separation.
“The Seafarer” and "The Wanderer” are both poems that describe the hardships of the average Anglo-Saxon warrior. These stories show that life during the times of the Anglo-Saxons is not pleasant. In fact, it appears to be tough, fearful, and depressing. In “The Seafarer”, a man describes his horrid life on the sea, and in "The Wanderer”, a man tells his tale of being put into exile and losing all his fellow warriors and lord. Both men feel physical and emotional pain while going through their adventure. The seafarer claims that the sea itself is torturing him by saying “...the sea took [him], swept [him] back and forth in sorrow and fear and pain.” (2-3) The seafarer also explains that coldness is much more than just a feeling but a
A man chosen as a seafarer endures alone in a blue abyss and survives through the harsh winds and hostile territory alone, with none to confide his suffering to other than himself, and virtually no reasons to continue the sufferation known as life, yet, despite the odds, he lives on, and tells his suffering in a poem known as “The Seafarer”. In “The Seafarer”, the author of the poem releases his long held suffering about his prolonged journey in the sea. While the poem explains his sufferings, the poem also reveals why he endured anguish, and lived on, even though the afterlife tempted him. Besides expressing his reasons to live, more importantly, the poem narrates the huge impacts of Christianity on him.