The Wanderer Poem

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.

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

In “The Wanderer” there is a theme of the inevitably of death and deaths appearance all around us. The wanderer’s grievance of the death he has faced is seen through the authors' use of ubi sunt:

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

Once more, the poet anticipates his own death when he composes this poem. But in each of these quatrains, the speaker fails to confront the full scope of his problem: winter, in fact, is a part of a cycle; winter follows spring, and spring returns after winter just as surely. Age, on the other hand, is not a cycle; youth will not come again for the speaker. In the third quatrain, the speaker resigns himself to this fact.]

This text response will be looking the comparison of the two poems, ‘Drifters’ by Bruce Dawe, And ‘In the park’ by Gwen Harwood under the name of Walter Lehmann. Drifters is about a seemingly constantly moving family, it describes the process the family will go through leaving their newest home. In the park is about a seemingly single mother raising her children, it describes the mother sitting in the park with her children when a previous lover comes by and talks about the children. With in each poem, the form and structure, language techniques and the tone and message will be analysed and compared with the other to gather a grater understanding of the Australian voice.

The use of symbolism and imagery is beautifully orchestrated in a magnificent dance of emotion that is resonated throughout the poem. The two main ideas that are keen to resurface are that of personal growth and freedom. Furthermore, at first glimpse this can be seen as a simple poem about a women’s struggle with her counterpart. However, this meaning can be interpreted more profoundly than just the causality of a bad relationship.

The poem “The Wanderer” speaks of a man who has been exiled from his clan, and is now forced to roam the land alone. Separation from his fellow kinsmen and lord seems to be the worst fate imaginable. The man speaks of his great loss, remembering the time when he was happy with his liege,

The speaker refers to the night as his acquaintance. This implies that the speaker has a lot of experience with the night, but has not become friends with it. Thus, because even the night, which has been alongside the speaker in comparison to anything or anyone else, is not a companion to the speaker, the idea of loneliness is enhanced. In addition, “rain” (2) is used to symbolize the speaker’s feelings of gloom and grief, because there is continuous pouring of the rain, which is unlikely to stop. In line 3, “city light” is used to convey the emotional distance between the speaker and society. Although the speaker has walked extensively, he has not yet interacted with anyone – thus distancing himself even further from society. Moreover, the moon, in lines 11 to 12, is used as a metaphor of the speaker’s feelings. The speaker feels extremely distant from society that he feels “unearthly.” The idea of isolation and loneliness in this poem is used as the theme of the poem; and the use of the setting and metaphors underscores the idea that the speaker feels abandoned from society.

The last two lines act as a slap in the face. Every element works toward death, and the speaker almost slips into eternal rest. One can see him, putting the

Again, the author selects a new set of imagery, such as stars, moon, sun, ocean, and wood to remind of the heaven in which the speaker used to live, and then to sweep it off right away. The last statement “For nothing now can ever come to any good” (16) finally reinforces the speaker’s loss and unhappiness. In loneliness, the speaker’s love becomes fiercer and more truthful. It is the fierceness and truthfulness that lead the speaker to the last stair of hopelessness. The end of the poem is also the hopeless end of the speaker’s life because of “nothing …good.”

While “The Seafarer” and “The Wanderer” have similar key themes, there are also quite a few unique differences between one another. Both men struggle in their lives, but the seafarer chooses to live the kind of life he wants, yet the wanderer does not have a choice. The seafarer claims to continue travelling since the sea gives him an adrenaline rush and embraces the sea. He feels that it is his duty to travel the sea. The wanderer has no choice in experiencing what he is experiencing as he has been forced into exile, which makes others feel even worse for him. It says in line 9 of “The Wanderer” that “[being] lonely and wretched, [he] wailed [his] woe,” which very much implies that he currently hates his life and would never wish it upon anyone else. A second difference between the two poems are the poems’ individual opinions on time. The seafarer believes that life gets increasingly difficult as time goes on due to the loss of glory and honor overtime. The seafarer also believes this could be due to one being closer to eternal life with God as time goes on. The wanderer, however, has an opposite opinion. Towards the end of the poem, he looks optimistic on life and knows that life can and will always get better. He himself is the only

"The Wanderer" is both a lament for all the things the speaker – and people more generally – have lost, and also a reflection on what wise men learn from their life experiences. With this dynamic duo, "The Wanderer" combines parts of two traditional genres of Old English poetry: the elegy, or lament, and the wisdom poem. These two genres aren't unrelated, since Anglo-Saxon poets believed that

     The reason for the speaker’s sudden surge of regret seems to be looming death, for he states in the very first line, “My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree toward heaven still” (1-2). This reference to heaven is the first evidence that the speaker thinks he is going to die. At this point in the poem the references to death or the end of life are rather peaceful, as exemplified by the statement. “But I am done with apple-picking now. Essence of winter sleep is on the night” (6-7). Though the words, “winter”, “sleep”, and “night” typically represent death, they do not necessarily invoke a

He transitions the tone of the poem from one of despair and hopelessness to one of encouragement which adds a realistic effect to the poem while still encouraging the reader. There is a thin line between being completely discouraging and being realistic; the speaker in the story seems to keep the perfect balance between these two lines. With the skillfully organized tone, the author helps the reader better understand the mood of the story as well as the difficult