Elegies

Elegies such as “The Seafarer” and “The Wife’s Lament” appeal to readers everywhere by presenting personal experiences. Both elegies make the readers sympathize by expressing misery. In “The Seafarer”, the seafarer speaks of the bitter and lonely life on the sea. “No man sheltered on the quiet fairness of earth can feel how wretched I was, drifting through winter on an ice-cold sea, whirled in sorrow, alone in a world blown clear of love, hung in icicles.” (pg 87) The elegy goes on to reiterate his pain and how he inevitably left home multiple times to answer the call of the sea. “The Wife’s Lament” speaks of a different type of misery, the misery of a wife separated from her husband. Banished by her husband’s kinsman and left alone to live in the woods, the wife laments her “friendless exile”. “A friendless exile in my sorry plight, my husband’s kinsmen plotted secretly how they might separate us from each other.” (pg 92)
Those these two elegies share the same bitter misery, “The Seafarer” strays from this motif towards the end. After line 64, the seafarer finds solace in the thought of an afterlife and God. “And a song to celebrate a place with the angels, life eternally blessed in the hosts of Heaven.” (pg 89) The seafarer is able to endure his life of isolation on the sea because of God, “Him who honored us, eternal, unchanging creator of earth.” (pg 90) In contrast, the wife remains firmly encased in her misery till the end of the elegy. Her last line speaks of the grief her husband must feel after being separated from her. “Grief must always be for him who yearning longs for his beloved.” (pg 93)