The poem “The Seafarer” was found in the Exeter Book. Exeter Book is a hand-copied manuscript that contains a large collection of Old English Poetry. The Exeter book is kept at Exeter Cathedral, England. The origin of the poem “The Seafarer” is in the Old English period of English literature, 450-1100. It was a time when only a few people could read and write.
Old English is the predecessor of modern English. The name was given to the Germanic dialects that were brought to England by the invaders. The invaders crossed the English Channel from Northern Europe. That is why Old English much resembles Scandinavian and German languages. It is not possible to read Old English without an intense study of one year.
“The Seafarer,” in the translated form, provides a portrait of a sense of loneliness, stoic endurance, suffering, and spiritual yearning that is the main characteristic of Old English poetry. The poem has two sections. The first section is elegiac, while the second section is didactic. The poem can also be read as two poems on two different subjects or a poem having two different subjects.
Furthermore, the poem can also be taken as a dramatic monologue. The first section of the poem is an agonizing personal description of the mysterious attraction and sufferings of sea life. However, in the second section of the poem, the speaker focuses on fortune, fleeting nature of fame, life. The poem ends with the explicitly Christian view of God as powerful and wrathful.
In the second section of the poem, the speaker proposes the readers not to run after the earthly accomplishments but rather anticipate the judgment of God in the afterlife. The poem deals with both Christiana and pagan ideas regarding overcoming the sense of loneliness and suffering.
For instance, the speaker of the poem talks about winning glory and being buried with a treasure, which is pagan idea. He also talks about the judgment of God in the afterlife, which is a Christian idea.
The poem “The Seafarer” can be taken as an allegory that discusses life as a journey and the conditions of humans as that of exile on the sea. The poem can be compared with the “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “The Seafarer” is an account of the interaction of a sensitive poet with his environment.
The Seafarer Summary
The poem opens with the Seafarer, who recalls his travels at sea. He tells how he endured the hardships when he was at sea. The Seafarer remembers that when he would be overwhelmed and saturated by the sharpness of cliffs and wilderness of waves when he would take the position of night watchman at the bow of the ship.
He narrates that his feet would get frozen. His insides would atrophy by hunger that could only be understood by a seaman.
The Seafarer then asserts that it is not possible for the land people to understand the pain of spending long winters at sea in exile where they are miserable in cold and estranged from kinsmen.
The Seafarer is all alone, and he recalls that the only sound he could hear was the roaring of waves in the sea. He would pretend that the sound of chirping birds is the voices of his fellow sailors who are singing songs and drinking mead. But unfortunately, the poor Seafarer has no earthly protector or companion at sea.
The Seafarer says that the city men are red-faced and enjoy an easy life. He laments that these city men cannot figure out how the exhausted Seafarer could call the violent waters his home. He says that the shadows are darker at night while snowfall, hail, and frost oppress the earth. Just like this, the hearth of a seafarer is oppressed by the necessity to prove himself at sea.
The Seafarer feels that he is compelled to take a journey to faraway places where he is surrounded by strangers. He asserts that no matter how courageous, good, or strong a person could be, and no matter how much God could have been benevolent to him in the past, there is no single person alive who would not fear the dangerous sea journey.
Through a man who journeys in the sea does not long for a treasure, women, or worldly pleasures, he always longs for the moving and rolling waves.
The speaker continues to say that when planes are green and flowers are blooming during the springtime, the mind of the Seafarer incurs him to start a new journey on the sea. He says that the arrival of summer is foreshadowed by the song of the cuckoo’s bird, and it also brings him the knowledge of sorrow pf coming sorrow.
The speaker asserts that the red-faced rich men on the land can never understand the intensity of suffering that a man in exile endures.
The Seafarer continues to relate his story by describing how his spirits travel the waves and leaps across the seas. He says that the spirit was filled with anticipation and wonder for miles before coming back while the cry of the bird urges him to take the watery ways of the oceans.
In the second part of the poem, the speaker (who is a Seafarer) declares that the joy of the Lord is much more stimulating than the momentary “dead life” on Earth. He says that the riches of the Earth will fade away someday as they are fleeting and cannot survive forever.
The men and women on Earth will die because of old age, illness, or war, and none of them are predictable. He did act every person to perform a good deed. When that person dies, he or she will directly go to heaven, and his children will also take pride in him.
The speaker of the poem observes that in Earth’s kingdom, the days of glory have passed. He says that the glory giving earthly lords and the powerful kings are no more. Now, weak men hold the power of Earth and are unable to display the dignity of their predecessors. Men’s faces grow pale because of their old age, and their bodies and minds weaken.
It does not matter if a man fills the grave of his brother with gold because his brother is unable to take the gold with him into the afterlife. He asserts that it is not possible to hide a sinned soul beneath gold as the Lord will find it.
The speaker warns the readers against the wrath of God. He is the wrath of God is powerful and great as He has created heavens, earth, and the sea. He asserts that a man who does not fear God is foolish, and His power will catch the immodest man by surprise while a humble and modest man is happy as they can withdraw strength from God.
He says that the hand of God is much stronger than the mind of any man. Despite the fact that a man is a master in his home on Earth, he must also remember that his happiness depends on God in the afterlife. Thus, it is in the interest of a man to honor the Lord in his life and remain faithful and humble throughout his life.
Themes in The Seafarer
Alienation and Loneliness
The first part of the poem is an elegy. It is generally portraying longings and sorrow for the past. The main theme of an elegy is longing. “The Seafarer” thrusts the readers into a world of exile, loneliness, and hardships.
The speaker describes the feeling of alienation in terms of suffering and physical privation. For instance, the speaker says that “My feet were cast / In icy bands, bound with frost, / With frozen chains, and hardship groaned / Around my heart.”
He says that his feet have immobilized the hull of his open-aired ship when he is sailing across the sea. His feet are seized by the cold. The cold corresponds to the sufferings that clasp his mind. He says that he is alone in the world, which is a blown of love.
He is only able to listen to the cries of different birds who replace sounds of human laughter. He is urged to break with the birds without the warmth of human bonds with kin.
The tragedy of loneliness and alienation is not evident for those people whose culture promotes brutally self-made individualists that struggle alone without assistance from friends or family. The world of Anglo-Saxons was bound together with the web of relationships of both friends and family.
For the people of that time, the isolation and exile that the Seafarer suffers in the poem is a kind of mental death. An exile and the wanderer, because of his social separation is the weakest person, as mentioned in the poem. Without any human connection, the person can easily be stricken down by age, illness, or the enemy’s sword.
Human Condition
Despite the fact that the Seafarer is in miserable seclusion at sea, his inner longing propels him to go back to his source of sorrow. The anonymous poet of the poem urges that the human condition is universal in so many ways that it perdures across cultures and through time.
The human condition consists of a balance between loathing and longing. For instance, people often find themselves in the love-hate condition with a person, job, or many other things. The same is the case with the Seafarer. His condition is miserable yet his heart longs for the voyage.
The poet asserts that those who were living in the safe cities and used to the pleasures of songs and wines are unable to understand the “push-pull” that the Seafarer tolerates. However, the character of Seafarer is the metaphor of contradiction and uncertainties that are inherent within-person and life.
For instance, the poet says: “Thus the joys of God / Are fervent with life, where life itself / Fades quickly into the earth. The wealth / Of the world neither reaches to Heaven nor remains” (65-69).
The lines are suggestive of resignation and sadness. These lines echo throughout Western Literature, whether it deals with the Christian comtemptu Mundi (contempt of the world) or deals with the trouble of existentialists regarding the meaninglessness of life. The response of the Seafarer is somewhere between the opposite poles.
Memory and Reminiscence
For the Seafarer, the greater source of sadness lies in the disparity between the glorious world of the past when compared to the present fallen world. The literature of the Icelandic Norse, the continental Germans, and the British Saxons preserve the Germanic heroic era from the periods of great tribal migration.
These migrations ended the Western Roman Empire. They were the older tribes of the Germanic peoples.
These time periods are known for the brave exploits that overwhelm any current glory. For instance, the poem says: “Now there are no rulers, no emperors, / No givers of gold, as once there were, / When wonderful things were worked among them / And they lived in lordly magnificence. / Those powers have vanished; those pleasures are dead.” (84-88).
However, the contemporary world has no match for the glorious past. The poet asserts: “The weakest survives and the world continues, / Kept spinning by toil. All glory is tarnished. / The world’s honor ages and shrinks, / Bent like the men who mold it” (89-92).
Just like the Greeks, the Germanics had a great sense of a passing of a “Golden Age.” The speaker longs for the more exhilarating and wilder time before civilization was brought by Christendom. Even though the poet continuously appeals to the Christian God, he also longs for the heroism of pagans.
This explains why the speaker of the poem is in danger and the pain for the settled life in the city. In short, one can say that the dissatisfaction of the speaker makes him long for an adventurous life.
The Seafarer Literary Analysis
Lines 1-5
From the beginning of the poem, an elegiac and personal tone is established. The speaker requests his readers/listeners about the honesty of his personal life and self-revelation that is about to come.
The speaker talks about the unlimited sorrow, suffering, and pain he experienced in the various voyages at sea. However, the speaker does not explain what has driven him to take the long voyages on the sea.
Lines 6-11
In these lines, the speaker of the poem conveys a concrete and intense imagery of anxiety, cold, rugged shorelines, and stormy seas. There are many comparisons to imprisonment in these lines. These comparisons drag the speaker into a protracted state of suffering. The adverse conditions affect his physical condition as well as his mental and spiritual sense of worth.
Lines 12-16
In these lines, the speaker of the poem emphasizes the isolation and loneliness of the ocean in which the speaker travels. The speaker of the poem compares the lives of land-dwellers and the lonely mariner who is frozen in the cold. The Seafarer moves forward in his suffering physically alone without any connection to the rest of the world.
Lines 17-19
The speaker of the poem again depicts his hostile environment and the extreme weather condition of the high waters, hail, cold, and wind.
Lines 20-26
In these lines, the first catalog appears. The speaker lists similar grammatical structures. In these lines, the speaker mentions the name of the four sea-bird that are his only companions. The plaintive cries of the birds highlight the distance from land and people.
The speaker says that the song of the swan serves as pleasure. However, it does not serve as pleasure in his case. The gulls, swans, terns, and eagles only intensify his sense of abandonment and illumine the lack of human compassion and warmth in the stormy ocean. The speaker is drowning in his loneliness (metaphorically).
Lines 27-30
In these lines, the speaker compares the life of the comfortable city dweller and his own life as a seafarer. He says that the city dwellers pull themselves in drink and pride and are unable to understand the suffering and miseries of the Seafarer.
The speakers say that his wild experiences cannot be understood by the sheltered inhabitants of lands. The land-dwellers cannot understand the motives of the Seafarer. However, the speaker says that he will also be accountable for the lifestyle like all people.
Lines 31-38
In these lines, the speaker describes the changes in the weather. As night comes, the hail and snow rain down from the skies. The speaker says that once again, he is drawn to his mysterious wandering. The speaker is unable to say and find words to say what he always pulled towards the suffering and into the long voyages on oceans.
The poet employed a paradox as “the seeking foreigners’ home” shows the Seafarer’s search for the shelter of homes while he is remote from the aspects of homes such as safety, warmth, friendship, love, and compassion.
Lines 39-43
In these lines, the central theme of the poem is introduced. There is a second catalog in these lines. He presents a list of earthly virtues such as greatness, pride, youth, boldness, grace, and seriousness. The speaker urges that all of these virtues will disappear and melt away because of Fate.
He adds that the person at the onset of a sea voyage is fearful regardless of all these virtues. Therefore, the speaker makes a poem allegorical in the sense that life is a journey on a powerful sea. The Seafarer is any person who relies on the mercy of God and also fears His judgment.
Lines 44-46
In these lines, the catalog of worldly pleasures continues. The speaker asserts that the traveler on a cold stormy sea will never attain comfort from rewards, harps, or the love of women. The speaker has to wander and encounter what Fate has decided for them.
In these lines, the readers must note that the notion of Fate employed in Middle English poetry as a spinning wheel of fortune is opposite to the Christian concept of God’s predestined plan.
Lines 47-57
In these lines, there is a shift from winter and deprivation to summer and fulfillment. There is an imagery of flowers, orchards, and cities in bloom, which is contrasted with the icy winter storms and winds. Similarly, the sea birds are contrasted with the cuckoo, a bird of summer and happiness.
The speaker says that despite these pleasant thoughts, the wanderlust of the Seafarer is back again. When the Seafarer is on land in a comfortable place, he still mourns; however, he is not able to understand why he is urged to abandon the comfortable city life and go to the stormy and frozen sea.
The speaker asserts that exile and sufferings are lessons that cannot be learned in the comfort zones of cities. To learn from suffering and exile, everyone needs to experience deprivation at sea. This will make them learn the most important lesson of life, and that is the reliance on God.
Lines 58-64
These lines conclude the first section of the poem. In these lines, the Seafarer asserts that his heart and mind time and again seek to wander the sea. This itself is the acceptance of life. At the beginning of the journey, the speaker employed a paradox of excitement, which shows that he has accepted the sufferings that are to come.
Despite the fact that he acknowledges the deprivation and suffering he will face the sea, the speaker still wants to resume his life at sea. The speaker breaks his ties with humanity and expresses his thrill to return to the tormented wandering.
Lines 65-68
In these lines, the speaker announces the theme of the second section of the poem. He asserts that the joy of surrendering before the will of God is far more than the earthly pleasures. He says that one cannot take his earthly pleasures with him to heaven. This section of the poem is mostly didactic and theological rather than personal.
Lines 69-72
In these lines, the speaker describes the three ways of death. The speaker urges that no man is certain when and how his life will end. However, the speaker describes the violent nature of Anglo-Saxon society and says that it is possible that their life may end with the sword of the enemy.
Lines 73-81
The speaker says that one can win a reputation through bravery and battle. For warriors, the earthly pleasures come who take risks and perform great deeds in battle. The speaker gives the description of the creation of funeral songs, fire, and shrines in honor of the great warriors.
Lines 82-88
In these lines, the speaker says that now the time and days of glory are over. The third catalog appears in these lines. The speaker laments the lack of emperors, rulers, lords, and gold-givers. He says that the rule and power of aristocrats and nobles have vanished. Now it is the time to seek glory in other ways than through battle.
Lines 89-95
In these lines, the speaker continues with the theme of loss of glory. He employed a simile and compared faded glory with old men remembering their former youth. The speaker says that the old man’s beards grow thin, turn white. They mourn the memory of deceased companions. The same is the case with the sons of nobles who fought to win the glory in battle are now dead.
Lines 96-98
In these lines, the speaker deals with the spiritual life after death. He says that the soul does not know earthly comfort. When the soul is removed from the body, it cares for nothing for fame and feels nothing.
Lines 99-101
In these lines, the speaker employed a metaphor of a brother who places gold coins in the coffin of his kinsman. This metaphor shows the uselessness of reputation and wealth to a dead man. The speaker asserts that in the next world, all earthly fame and wealth are meaningless.
Moreover, the anger of God to a sinful person cannot be lessened with any wealth. Therefore, the speaker asserts that all his audience must heed the warning not to be completely taken in by worldly fame and wealth.
Lines 102-107
In these lines of the poem, the speaker shifts to the last and concluding section of the poem. This is the most religious part of the poem. The speaker asserts that everyone fears God because He is the one who created the earth and the heavens. He is the doer of everything on earth in the skies.
Lines 108-116
In these lines, the speaker gives his last and final catalog. He gives a list of commandments and lessons that a humble man must learn who fears God and His judgment. The Seafarer says that a wise person must be strong, humble, chaste, courageous, and firm with the people around him.
He must not resort to violence even if his enemies try to destroy and burn him. The one who believes in God is always in a state of comfort despite outside conditions.
Lines 117-124
In these lines, the speaker reprimands that Fate and God are much more powerful than the personal will of a person. The Seafarer says that people must consider the purpose of God and think of their personal place in heaven, which is their ultimate home. The speaker talks about love, joys, and hope that is waiting for the faithful people in heaven.
Lines 124-126
The poem ends with a prayer in which the speaker is praising God, who is the eternal creator of earth and its life. The poem ends with a traditional ending, “Ameen.” This ending raises the question of how the final section connects or fails to connect with the more emotional, and passionate song of the forsaken Seafarer who is adrift on the inhospitable waves in the first section of the poem.
Title
Originally, the poem does not have a title at all. In the manuscript found, there is no title. The editors and the translators of the poem gave it the title “The Seafarer” later. The title makes sense as the speaker of the poem is a seafarer and spends most of his life at sea.
However, the poem is also about other things as well. It is about longing, loss, the fleeting nature of time, and, most importantly, the trust in God. By calling the poem “The Seafarer,” makes the readers focus on only one thing.
Setting
As the speaker of the poem is a seafarer, one can assume that the setting of the poem must be at sea. The speaker is drifting in the middle of the stormy sea and can only listen to the cries of birds and the sound of the surf. Hail and snow are constantly falling, which is accompanied by the icy cold. The cold bites at and numbs the toes and fingers.
The speaker of the poem also mentions less stormy places like the mead hall where wine is flowing freely. He also mentions a place where harp plays, and women offer companionship. However, these places are only in his memory and imagination.
The speaker, at one point in the poem, is on land where trees blossom and birds sing. It marks the beginning of spring. However, these sceneries are not making him happy. His legs are still numbing with the coldness of the sea. He longs to go back to the sea, and he cannot help it. The speaker is very restless and cannot stay in one place.
The speaker says that he is trapped in the paths of exile. These paths are a kind of psychological setting for the speaker, which is as real as the land or ocean. This is the place where he constantly feels dissatisfaction, loneliness, and hunger.
He can only escape from this mental prison by another kind of metaphorical setting. It is the one surrendered before God. It is the only place that can fill the hunger of the Seafarer and can bring him “home” from the sea.
Speaker
Right from the beginning of the poem, the speaker says that he is narrating a true song about himself. This makes the poem sound autobiographical and straightforward. The readers make themselves ready for his story. However, they really do not get what the true problem is.
The speaker of the poem is a wanderer, a seafarer who spent a lot of time out on the sea during the terrible winter weather. He is restless, lonely, and deprived most of the time. He mentions that he is urged to take the path of exile. However, he never mentions the crime or circumstances that make him take such a path.
The speaker of the poem also refers to the “sea-weary man.” By referring to a sea-weary man, he refers to himself. However, he also broadens the scope of his address in vague terms. He appears to claim that everyone has experienced what he has been feeling and also understands what he has gone through. This makes the poem more universal.
The speaker claims that those people who have been on the paths of exiles understand that everything is fleeting in the world, whether it is friends, gold, or civilization. With such acknowledgment, it is not possible for the speaker to take pleasure in such things. He asserts that the only stable thing in life is God.
The speaker appears to be a religious man. Even though he is a seafarer, he is also a pilgrim. He narrates the story of his own spiritual journey as much as he narrates the physical journey.
Form and Meter
Unlike the middle English poetry that has predetermined numbers of syllables in each line, the poetry of Anglo-Saxon does not have a set number of syllables. Anglo-Saxon poetry has a set number of stresses, syllables with emphasis.
In the poem, there are four stresses in which there is a slight pause between the first two and the last two stresses. Such stresses are called a caesura. The first stressed syllable in the second-half line must have the same first letter (alliterate) with one or both stresses in the first-half line. For instance, in the poem, lines 48 and 49 are:
Groves take on blossoms, the cities grow fair, (Bearwas blostmum nimað, byrig fægriað)
the fields are comely, the world seems new (wongas wlitigað, woruld onetteð).
The above lines have a different number of syllables. Line 48 has 11 syllables, while line 49 has ten syllables. However, in each line, there are four syllables.
Literary Devices in the poem
In order to bring richness and clarity in the texts, poets use literary devices. With the use of literary devices, texts become more appealing and meaningful. In the poem “The Seafarer,” the poet employed various literary devices to emphasize the intended impact of the poem. Following are the literary devices used in the poem:
Metaphor
When an implicit comparison is drawn between two objects or persons, it is called a metaphor. For example, in the poem, the metaphor employed is “Death leaps at the fools who forget their God.”
In this line, the author believes that on the day of judgment God holds everything accountable. He says that those who forget Him in their lives should fear His judgment. The line serves as a reminder to worship God and face his death and wrath.
Euphonious Alliteration
Alliteration is the repetition of the consonant sound at the beginning of every word at close intervals. For instance, in the poem,
“When wonderful things were worked among them.”
There is a repetition of “w” sound that creates a pleasing rhythm and enhances the musical effect of the poem.
“So summer’s sentinel, the cuckoo, sings.”
There is a repetition of “s’ sound in verse.
Personification
Attributing human qualities to non-living things is known as personification. In the poem, the poet employed personification in the following lines:
“The soul stripped
of its flesh knows nothing / Of sweetness or sour, feels no pain…”
These lines describe the fleeting nature of life, and the speaker preaches about God. He says that as a person, their senses fade, and they lose their ability to feel pain as they lose the ability to appreciate and experience the positive aspects of life.
Anaphora
The repetition of two or more words at the beginning of two or more lines in poetry is called anaphora. In the poem, the poet says:
“Those powers have vanished; those pleasures are dead.”
The repetition of the word “those” at the beginning of the above line is anaphora.
In the above lines, the speaker believes that there are no more glorious emperors and rulers. The world is wasted away. He also asserts that instead of focusing on the pleasures of the earth, one should devote himself to God.
Simile
When two different objects are compared to one another to understand the meaning, the use of the word “like,” “as,” etc. is called a simile. For example, in the poem, imagery is employed as:
“The world’s honor ages and shrinks, / Bent like the men who mold it…”
In the above line, the readers draw attention to the increasingly impure and corrupt nature of the world. He asserts that man, by essence, is sinful, and this fact underlines his need for God.
Polysyndeton
The employment of conjunction in a quick succession repeatedly in verse in known as polysyndeton. In the poem, the poet employed polysyndeton as:
“And forth in sorrow and fear and pain.”
The speaker describes the experiences of the Seafarer and accompanies it with his suffering to establish the melancholic tone of the poem.
Hyperbola
Hyperbola is the exaggeration of an event or anything. For instance, in the poem,
“Showed me suffering in a hundred ships, / In a thousand ports…”
In these lines, the speaker describes his experiences as a seafarer in a dreadful and prolonged tone.
Caesura
It is a pause in the middle of a line. The pause can sometimes be coinciding. For example:
“For a soul overflowing with sin, and nothing / Hidden on earth rises to Heaven.”
In the above line, the pause stresses the meaninglessness of material possessions and the way God’s judgment will be unaffected by the wealth one possesses on earth.