The Wanderer

The Wanderer, one of the oldest extant poems in the English language, is a psychological study of an embattled warrior now in exile, a survivor of a war his homeland lost. He wanders an unforgiving wintry landscape grieving his devastated homeland, his slaughtered people, and, most poignantly, his murdered lord. The Wanderer has lost everything that matters to him, and, brooding and broken, he struggles to understand his isolation and sorrows. The elegiac poem explores the conflict within this defeated warrior between his profound sense of loss and the stoic code of the soldier not to give in to such emotions, to bear great suffering in courageous silence. Only in the poem’s framing first and last stanzas, most likely added by a later writer, does the poem offer as consolation the Christian idea of the ruined world as a pilgrim-state, everything in it impermanent as each soul journeys toward the radiant stability found only in God.

Medieval scholars speculate on the poem’s author as well as the century of the poem’s composition, most likely the fifth century. However, the poem’s importance is modern. The Wanderer’s heroic, if dark, vision has influenced modern writers Ernest Hemingway, J. R. R. Tolkien, and George R. R. Martin; poets Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden, and Seamus Heaney; as well as filmmakers John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, and Clint Eastwood. In 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated the Exeter Book, the Medieval collection of poems in which The Wanderer originally appeared, as part of the Memory of the World Registry, which honors ancient documents considered indispensable in understanding the evolution of civilization.

Poet Biography

The actual composer of The Wanderer is a matter of speculation. The document itself is part of a collection of some 40 poems, all in Old English, dating to around the 10th century. That anthology, known as the Exeter Book, is considered the oldest book in the English language. It has been housed in the archives of the Exeter Cathedral Library for more than a millennium. That library, located about three hours southwest of London, is recognized as one of the world’s most important collections of Old English documents.

The 10th-century text of the Exeter Book, however, is most likely the work of a scrivener, or a compiler, presumably a well-educated Roman Catholic monk charged with transcribing a poem that had been around for generations. Medieval scholars speculate that The Wanderer itself dates to the fifth or sixth century. Given the culture of the late Middle Ages and the poem’s defined rhythm, the poem was most likely designed to be recited aloud in great halls during feasts before or after battles, or perhaps sung as part of services that honored fallen warriors. 

Additional speculation about the author centers on the shorter beginning and ending stanzas that frame the lamentations of the Wanderer. This frame offers a reassuring vision of the consolations of a Christian afterlife. Without that frame, the poem’s vision reflects the pagan sensibility that defined England in the Middle Ages, a forbidding vision that regarded the world as driven by indifferent forces that doomed humanity to grim lives of uncertainty and vulnerability. The frame creates from the story of the Wanderer an aspirational parable. This suggests strongly that the frame might have been added by a compiler of the text as late as the 10th century, by which time missionary Christianity had gained a foothold along Britain’s coastal cultures.

Poem text

Often the lonely receives love, 

The Creator’s help, though heavy with care  

Over the sea he suffers long  

Stirring his hands in the frosty swell,  

The way of exile. Fate never wavers.  

The wanderer spoke; he told his sorrows,  

The deadly onslaughts, the death of the clan, 

“At dawn alone I must 

Mouth my cares; the man does not live 

Whom I dare tell my depths 

Straight out. I see truth 

In the lordly custom for the courageous man  

To bind fast his breast, loyal 

To his treasure closet, thoughts aside.  

The weary cannot control fate  

Nor do bitter thoughts settle things. 

The eager for glory often bind  

Something bloody close to their breasts. 

“Wretched, I tie my heart with ropes 

Far from my home, far from my kinsmen  

Since a hole in the ground hid my chief 

Long ago. Laden with cares,  

Weary, I crossed the confine of waves, 

Sought the troop of a dispenser of treasure, 

Far or near to find the man  

Who knew my merits in the mead hall, 

Who would foster a friendless man,  

Treat me to joys. He who has put it to a test 

Knows how cruel a companion is sorrow  

For one who has few friendly protectors.  

Exile guards him, not wrought gold,  

A freezing heart, not the fullness of the earth. 

He remembers warriors, the hall, rewards, 

How, as a youth, his friend honored him at feasts, 

The gold-giving prince. Joy has perished.”  

“He knows how it is to suffer long  

Without the beloved wisdom of a friendly lord. 

Often when sorrow and sleep together  

Bind the worn lonely warrior  

It seems in his heart that he holds and kisses 

The lord of the troop and lays on his knee 

His head and hands as he had before  

In times gone by at the gift-giver’s throne. 

When the friendless warrior awakens again  

He sees before him the black waves,  

Sea birds bathing, feathers spreading,  

Frost and snow falling with hail.  

The wounds of his heart are heavier,  

Sore after his friends. Sorrow is renewed  

When the mind ponders the memory of kinsmen; 

He greets them with joy; he anxiously grasps 

For something to say. They swim away again. 

The breasts of ghosts do not bring the living 

Much wisdom. Woe is renewed  

For him who must send his weary heart 

Way out over the prison of waves.  

“Therefore in this world I cannot think of a reason 

Why my soul does not blacken when I seriously consider 

All the warriors, tested at war,  

How they suddenly sank to the floor, 

The brave kinsmen. But this world  

Every day falls to dust.  

No man is wise until he lives many winters 

In the kingdom of the world.  

The wise must be patient,  

Never too hasty with feelings nor too hot with words 

Nor too weak as a warrior nor too witlessly brash  

Nor too fearful nor too ready nor too greedy for reward 

Nor even too feverish for boasting until testing his fibre. 

A man should wait before he makes a vow  

Until, like a true warrior, he eagerly tests  

Which way the courage of his heart will course. 

The good warrior must understand how ghostly it will be 

When all this world of wealth stands wasted  

As now in many places about this massive earth  

Walls stand battered by the wind,  

Covered by frost, the roofs collapsed.  

The wine halls crumbled; the warriors lie dead,

Cut off from joy; the great troop all crumpled  

Proud by the wall. One war took,  

Led to his death. One a bird lifted 

Over the high sea. One the hoary wolf 

Broke with death. One, bloody-cheeked,  

A warrior hid in a hole in the ground.  

Likewise God destroyed this earthly dwelling 

Until the strongholds of the giants stood empty,  

Without the sounds of joy of the city-dwellers.”  

Then the wise man thinks about the wall 

And deeply considers this dark life. 

From times far away the wanderer recalls 

The deadly slashes and says,  

“What happened to the horse? What happened to the warrior?

What happened to the gift-giver? 

What happened to the wine hall? Where are the sounds of joy? 

Oh, bright beaker! Oh, armored warrior! 

Oh the chiefs majesty! How those moments went, 

Grayed in the night as if they never were!  

A wall still stands near the tracks of the warriors, 

Wondrously high! Worms have stained it.  

A host of spears hungry for carnage  

Destroyed the men, that marvelous fate! 

Storms beat these stone cliffs, 

A blanket of frost binds the earth,  

Winter is moaning! When the mists darken 

And night descends, the north delivers  

A fury of hail in hatred at men.  

All is wretched in the realm of the earth; 

The way of fate changes the world under heaven. 

Here is treasure lent, here is a friend lent, 

Here is a man lent, here is a kinsman lent.  

All of the earth will be empty!” 

So spoke the wise in heart; he sits alone with his mystery. 

He is good to keep faith; grief must never escape  

A man’s heart too quickly unless with his might like a true warrior 

He has sought a lasting boon. It is best for him who seeks love,  

Help from the heavenly Father where all stands firm.  

“The Wanderer.” Trans. Jeffrey Hopkins. Fifth or sixth century. VQR.

Summary

The poem opens with a speaker who, in a five-line prologue, offers the wisdom that no matter how much suffering a person endures, no matter how heavy their cares, they receive love through “the Creator’s help” (Line 2). To test that argument, the speaker then introduces the lonely figure of a man, a warrior now in exile, a survivor of a great war who is alone on a desolate, wintry beach, dipping his fingers into the icy waters of the black swells. 

In Stanza 2, the Wanderer himself speaks. He acknowledges the depths of his sorrow and his loneliness. But, following the stoic code of the warrior, he admits, “[T]he man does not live / Whom I dare tell my depths” (Lines 10-11). Once a proud warrior, “eager for glory” (Line 17), he is resigned to accept his desolation without complaint. It is his fate. Complaining will do no good, as “[t]he weary cannot control fate / Nor do bitter thoughts settle things” (Lines 15-16).

In Stanza 3, the Wanderer, his homeland razed, his people lost, recalls his dead kinsmen and the fleeting joy of their camaraderie, the reckless nights of boisterous feasting after victories in battle—all gone now. More poignantly, he recalls his lord, his “gold-giving prince” (Line 35), now dead, left ingloriously “in a hole in the ground” (Line 20). The Wanderer acknowledges he has searched for a new lord, a new “dispenser of treasure” (Line 24), but to no avail. He has found no one to whom he might pledge his loyalty. He is doomed only to remember such glory. For now, “sorrow” (Line 29) is his only companion.

Stanza 4 acknowledges the special bond the Wanderer felt to his lord and how that bond of fealty gave the Wanderer his identity, security, and wealth. The lord is now a memory that haunts the Wanderer’s dreams, and when he inevitably wakens, the Wanderer is back alone, along the wintry edges of the sea, icy “black waves” (Line 45) crashing, shadowy seagulls coasting above him. He cannot help but remember his dead kinsmen. In his memories and sometimes in his dreams, he “greets them with joy” (Line 51), but inevitably, “[w]oe is renewed” (Line 54). 

In Stanza 5, the Wanderer surrenders to this dark vision of a world in ruin, a world that “everyday falls to dust” (Line 62). He concedes that he has lived “many winters” (Line 63), long enough now to understand that given such a bleak world, a person cannot be too emotional, cannot afford anger, cannot be weak, cannot surrender to despair. The “good warrior” (Line 73) understands that no matter how great the spoils, no matter how sweet the victories in battle, no matter how righteous his lord may be, all is vanity: “[W]ine halls crumbled; the warriors lie dead” (Line 78). It is fate, he concedes—great kingdoms rise, and great kingdoms fall.

Stanza 6 offers the Wanderer’s dark ruminations on all that he has lost: his brave warrior-companions, their mighty horses, his noble liege. “How,” he laments, “those moments went” (Line 95). War, “spears hungry for carnage” (Line 99), have destroyed his world and left it empty. His comrades and his lord dead, they are consigned to the degradation of the “worms” (Line 98), that is, to base decomposition. The Wanderer feels the hard descent of night, the fast approach of winter, each suggesting the enveloping depths of his despair: “All is wretched in the realm of the earth” (Line 106). He feels his helplessness in the hands of blind fate. It is “the way of fate [that] changes the world under heaven” (Line 107).

The speaker returns to close the poem. They are keen to the predicament of the Wanderer, how “he sits alone with his mystery” (Line 111) about how everything comes to ruin. The speaker then offers a closing address forbidding despair, a message delivered if not to the Wanderer, who is lost to his dark vision of the mysterious operations of fate, then certainly to the reader: Put trust and faith in “the heavenly Father” (Line 115). Fate does not drive the world. Rather, it is a loving, inscrutable God. That love stands firm and provides a secure hope, a “lasting boon” (Line 114), in a world where everything collapses into ruin.