Loneliness in The Seafarer by Bradley and The Wifes Lament by Stanford :: essays research papers

When exiled from society, desolation becomes apparent within a person. The poems The Seafarer translated by S.A.J. Bradley and The Wife?s Lament translated by Ann Stanford have a despicable and forlorn mood. Throughout each poem exists immense passion and emotion. In the two elegiac poems there is hardship, loneliness and uncertainty for each flake to live with. The Wife?s Lament speaks movingly about loneliness, collectible to the speaker projecting the lonesomeness of the women who was exiled from society. The woman in the poem has been exiled from her conserve and everything she loves, all(a) she has is a single oak-tree to be comforted by. As she has been banished from all she loves, the tone becomes gloomy and depressing. The speaker uses expressions such as joyless and Stygian to create a sorrowful mood for the poem. As well as the expressions used in this poem, the setting also creates loneliness. The setting generates a change and desolate place which makes the woman feel exiled from society.The Seafarer is about an gaga sailor, and the loneliness and struggle of being out at sea. The speaker uses his loneliness out at sea along with his struggles such as the frigid and hunger he faces. The speaker puts emphasis on his loneliness by saying, ?my heart wanders away, my soul roams with sea?. This adds to the imagery that the sailor is attached to his feel at sea, his love for sailing yet adds the isolation that comes with his life. Both poems where pen in the Anglo-Saxton era in Old English and later translated into English. As well as both poems being written in the homogeneous time period, they are both elegiac poems, meaning they are touching and mournful.