Anglo saxon lyrics and elegies (Old English lyrics and elegies)

J.A. Cuddon definesA lyric is usually fairly short, not often larger than fifty or sixty lines and often only between and thirty lines; and it usually expresses the feelings and thoughts of a single speaker in a personal and subjective fashion. And the same critic , talking about elegy, states since the 16th century and elegy has come to mean a poem of mourning for an individual or a lament for some tragic event. (J.A.Cuddon) As such lamentations are generally the manifestation of personal sorrow; it becomes evident that the elegies are lyrical in nature. But, simultaneously this must be said that all the lyrics are not elegies. Though the Anglo-Saxons were a militant race, not all their poems are exclusively heroic. The presence of lyrics and elegies does balance the heroic notes. In fact, the heroic poetry is often tinged with melancholy the heros craving for glory is often rooted in pains. So, the attitudes heroic or melancholic are generated from the awareness that life and human achievements are transient in a changeful world. While the heroic poetry chooses to celebrate mans indomitable desire to rise above this transitoriness, elegies usually elegies usually lament the frustration of human hopes showing the futility of a short lived life. Among the major lyrics and elegies we can mention Widsith, The Wanderer, Deors Lament, The Ruin, The Wifes Complaint and The Husbands Message, The Seafarer and Wulf and Eadwacer. Widsith is a poem of 143 lines in Old English in Exeter Book comprising three mnemonic name lists concerning and connected by the experience of the eponymous minstrel. In the first list we find the names of the great rulers, in the second the tribes among whom the minstrel claims to have travelled, in the third the names of those people whom the wandering poet sought out. As the poet narrates how he has always been rewarded by the people he entertained, we come to know that literature has long been a paying profession. While Widsith is only a lyric Wanderer is a lyrical elegy. It is a poem of 115 lines expresses the lament of a man who has lost his lord and now journeys alone in search of a new lord. In sheep he dreams the days of his former happiness but awakening, he finds nothing but grey waves and falling snow which adds to his distress. Then he passes on to reflect the impermanence of life. The poem begins and ends with a brief and bald statement of Christian consolation that good man never loses his faith on God, the Father who protects us all. Thus we can justifiably suspect a Christian interpolation. Deor also called Deors Lament, Old English heroic poem of 42 lines in Exeter Book, divided into seven unequal sections and is one of the two surviving Old English poems to have a refrain. (The other is the fragmentary: Wulf and Eadwacer) It is the complaint of a scop (minstrel), Deor, who was replaced at his court by another minstrel and deprived of his lands and his lords favour. In the poem Deor recalls, in irregular stanzas, five examples of the

sufferings of various figures from Germanic legend like Wayland, the Smith, Theodoric and Hermanric. Each stanza ends with the refrain That trouble passed; so can this. The Ruin is a 45 lines poem in the Exeter Book, focusing on the same theme of mutability. It describes the decay of a city which is thought to be the Roman City of Bath which was a ruin in the Anglo-Saxon times. The poet compares the past glory with the present nothingness and thus highlights the futility of material prosperity and attainment. The Wifes Lament is an Old English poem of 53 lines in the Exeter Book. That the speaker is female is established by feminine grammatical endings in the first two lines, making it (like Wulf and Eadwacer) a rare early English example of a Frauenlied (womans song). It is a poem about the pain of separation suffered by the speaker because of the absent husband/lover and his family. The precise situation is impossible to determine; the speaker is compelled to live in an earth-barrow so the poem can be interpreted as a voice from the grave. Some critics have even tried to analyse it from a religious point of view. According to those critics, the situation seems primarily to be an image of the separation of the human soul from God. The Husbands Message is an Old English poem of 53 lines in Exeter Book. It is often treated as a counter-part to The Wifes Complaint. Here a man sends his message to his wife after his long absence. He seems to have left his native land because of a feud and prospered in another country. Now, secure and prosperous, the husband calls his wife to join him. It is too interpreted sometimes as a message from Christ to the church. The Seafarer is an Old English poem of about 120 lines in the Exeter Book. The opening section of the poem discusses the miseries and attractions of life at sea, before moves to moral reflections on the transience of life and ends in an explicitly Christian part with a concluding prayer. The structure of the poem and the coherence of the relationship between its two halves have been much debated. Some critics see the poem as an allegorical representation of human exile from God on the sea of life. Wulf and Eadwacer is and Old English poem of 19 lines in the Exeter Book. It is a dramatic monologue which expresses the intense romantic yearning of a woman for her outlawed lover. Eadwacer may be her hated husband, or at least the man with whom against her will, she is forced to live. (David Daiches) These short poems prove that heroism and tender sentiments are not necessarily contradictory. They give us, along with the heroic poetry, a complete picture of the society - where people participated not only in war but also in love, affection and lamentation.