' The Wanderer, From The Exeter Book Elegies

Essentially a monologue set within a frame, this poem creates two personae. The anonymous author gives a brief introduction and conclusion. The Wanderer, an aging warrior, who roams the world seeking shelter and aid. The Wanderer’s monologue divides into two distinct parts, the first being a lament for his exile and the loss of kin, friends, home, and the generosity of his king. In nature, he finds absolutely no comfort, for he has set sail on the winter stricken sea. Poignantly, the speaker dreams that he is among his companions, and embracing his king, only to awaken facing the gray, winter sea, and snowfall mingled with hail.

In “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”, Thomas describes men as wise, good, wild, and grave, and displays their perspective about death. For wise men, “because their words had forked no lightning, they / do not go gentle into that good night” (5-6). The metaphor in the line reflects wise men’s regret in life as their words, the ability of intelligent people, forked no lightning, meaning they did not leave any significant marks in history before dying. Therefore as good night, a metaphor for death, approaches, wise men resist dying to satisfy their discontent, and all other men convey similar perspectives. However, since night will come anyways, Thomas know men cannot escape death, so he agonizes for his incompetence in saving his father. Comparably in “One Art,” Bishop claims “so many things seemed filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster” (2-3). The disappeared objects metaphorize Bishop’s loss of precious memory fragment, such as losing the mothers’ watch representing the farewell with her mother. At first, Bishop expresses she is fine with things vanishing. Yet overtime, the materials grow more substantial, and ultimately, when Bishop separates with her beloved, she notes “it may look like (Write it!) a disaster” (19), mentioning loss is indeed a disaster. She knows the farewell was

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

Anglo-Saxon literature often expressed concepts of survival, battle, exile, male dominance in society, and loyalty to the lord. These aspects are strongly represented in both “The Wanderer” and “The Wife’s Lament”. Both elegies deliver themes of self-exile and the mourning of lost companions. Ideas of longing and alienation are present in these two Anglo-Saxon poems through use of figurative language, structure, point of view, comparison, and various other literary techniques.

The three poems show exile and keening, but the poems also show tactile imagery. The Wanderer show tactile imagery in line three, “wintery seas,” describes the setting is in this poem along with the tone. The Seafarer show’s tactile imagery as well, in line nine, “in icy bands, bound with frost,” the tactile imagery in this line describes the coldness of the thoughts in the lonely man’s head. In The Wife’s Lament the tactile imagery is shown in line forty seven, “That my beloved sits under a rocky cliff rimed with frost a lord dreary in spirit drenched with water in the ruined hall.” The wife in this tactile imagery is show how her husband is suffering just

The speaker says, “…older than the flow of human blood in my veins” (Line 1). Blood is only developed when a fetus is being grown, in the Mother, but within the blood lies DNA of their ancestors from past generations. The speaker uses human blood to relate to the fact that our blood is old and connected to our heritage because we carry their DNA inside of us. “I’ve seen its muddy bosom” (Line 9). Muddy, implies a bleak outlook of not being able to see the end. Lose of hope. “Turns all golden in the sunset” (Line 9) the ominous of a sparse future comes to an end with the sunset signifying hope and a new beginning. The association to his ancestors’ bleak past is his what binds their experiences to him.

The last line in the poem “and since they were not the ones dead, turned to their own affairs” lacks the emotions the reader would expect a person to feel after a death of a close family member. But instead, it carries a neutral tone which implies that death doesn’t even matter anymore because it happened too often that the value of life became really low, these people are too poor so in order to survive, they must move on so that their lives can continue. A horrible sensory image was presented in the poem when the “saw leaped out at the boy’s hand” and is continued throughout the poem when “the boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh…the hand was gone already…and that ended it”, this shows emphasis to the numbness the child felt. The poem continues with the same cold tone without any expression of emotion or feelings included except for pain, which emphasizes the lack of sympathy given. Not only did the death of this child placed no effect on anyone in the society but he was also immediately forgotten as he has left nothing special enough behind for people to remember him, so “since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This proves that life still carries on the same way whether he is present or not, as he is insignificant and that his death

In the final stanza, he makes the reader sad as he assumes the inevitable will happen and she will die. He expresses this through metaphors such as a “black figure in her white cave”, which is a reference to the bright white hospital rooms and although he is the black figure he thinks she just sees a shadow which could be the grim reaper or even death himself, coming to end her journey. No one wants to deal with the sorrow of losing a loved one for good, as

She describes their movement as aimless, and careless because of their lack of motivation to struggle on, seeing life as “ought” or nothing compared to what it once was before the loss. The reader can imagine being in the position of the sufferer; very stagnant, and lifeless almost like a corpse which is what makes this form of diction so evoking.

The author’s diction makes the reader feel that death ca be defeated. For example, death has been called “mighty and dreadful” but the author shows that it is not more than a “short sleep” where men go for the “rest of their bones.” The general idea of death is frightful and scary, but the reader is told that it’s only a short phase everyone goes through. It’s an opportunity for men to separate their soul and physical body. In

To start off the analysis, the setting of the entire poem is significant. Though the poem takes place in a house, the atmosphere the house is set in is also important. The month is September which is a month of fall which can be seen as a symbol for decline. It definitely insinuates that the poem is leading towards death. Line 1 has “September rain falls on the house” which gives the feeling of a dark and cold night with a storm on top of that. To further develop that, Bishop gives us the failing light in line 2 to also give us an idea of the grandmother’s struggle. Bishop uses the cyclical theme of changing seasons to show the unending nature of what is transpiring within the

The Poem begins with a personification of death as "kindly" (3). By doing this, the speaker introduces a portrayal on death that might have conflictions. Most of the times, death has a negative connotation. Whether it is an inevitable or tragic view, it opposes to what is seen in the poem. The speaker accepts death as a friendly invitation when the time is right, rather than something that is bound to happen. The speaker then joins immortality, personified as a passenger in a carriage. Immortality simply cannot be a passenger as it is a non-living thing. The reasoning for this could be that immortality ties together the link between the speaker and death, ultimately introducing the voyage to come. The first stanza sets a precedent of a meter to follow throughout most of the poem. The first line contains eight

Figuratively, in stanza three, the poem symbolizes the three stages of life: childhood represented by “Children strove” (l. 9), youth represented by “the Fields of Gazing Grains” (l. 11) and the end of the life represented by “the Setting Sun” (l. 12). On the way of her journey, the speaker views children struggling to win in the race in School. She also sees cereal grasses collectively in the field, and at last the speaker perceives with her eyes that the sun is setting on the way of her journey. This stanza gives us a clue of her passing by this world; however the speaker is not able to figure out that she is dead. She simply thinks the sun is setting on a regular basis.

People would not want to hear that their loved ones merely gave up and died passively. This poem in itself is a celebration of life, the poem is not only about death but it is an affirmation of life. To further emphasise the points being made Dylan Thomas utilises a wide range of literary devices. Parallelism is used from lines seven to fifteen to juxtapose the different attitudes of the so called “genres” of men at their death. This is used to outline that if you continuously lead one set type of lifestyle whether it is as a “wild man”, a “grave man” or a “good man” you will not be satisfied when your time comes to die. The only true way to be satisfied is to live a life of balance; only with a good contrast can you be at peace.

the theme of death. The speaker of the poems talks about the loss of a