The poems The Sailor and The Tramp are both elegiac in nature: each speaker offers a reflective monologue about his journey from the past he has lost to the lonely present he must face, even if there are limits to the disappearance of the past, since it clearly remains in their memories of "days of toil". The formula "ubi sunt" used in both is a traditional method of expressing awareness of loss and the transitory nature of life: for example, in a rhetorical scene in The Wanderer it takes the form of a list. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayWhat can you tell me? How's the wizard doing? How cwom maþþumgyfa? Come cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas? The poet here expresses how distant the past really is now, as the hypothetical sage asks in vain for the donors of treasures and the location of banquets, as these key examples of his past life have now disappeared. This rhetorical desperation is emphasized by the repeated use of "Hwær", as he seems to deny the permanent loss of his familiar environment. The oral tradition in which Old English manuscript poetry is rooted influences this structure, as the monosyllabic word that demands responses directly from any potential audience creates a striking new "movement" within the poem, as if granting the performer the possibility of deferring his intonations to re-engage attention and give emphasis to the next moment of realization. This is followed by another repeated structure, a triadic structure of laments introduced by the vocative 'Eala': Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!Eala þeodnes þrym!The shift from 'Hwær' to 'Eala', from rhetorical question to exclamation of lament, conveys the loss of the familiar without describing the actual process of his exile and the loss of those individual aspects of his life . The "Eala" movement, however, changes the subject; the glittering cup, the armored warrior, and the glory of the prince whose loss he laments in these lines are more traditionally celebrated in heroic tales than in the daily joys of the hall mentioned above. This escalation allows for greater dramatic power in the laments, as he laments the loss of his culture's ideals, as well as his personal experience. If one accepts Pasternack's suggestion that in manuscript poetry textual techniques replace performance context, the entire movement can be read as replacing an interpreter acting out the loss, since the questions and laments are emotional explanations directly to the reader who they communicate his pain. to the loss of his past. The Navigator does not directly refer to a past that the speaker has lost by being in exile on the ocean, in the same way that The Wanderer refers to his battles and his relatives; instead the earth-bound objects or places (which are similar to the objects mentioned in 'The Wanderer) are represented through a hypothetical man on the shore, and the sense of the past that the speaker must have had is conveyed by the contrast of a normal and comforting life with his hard and lonely time at sea. "The man who lives happiest on earth" cannot really know how severe the winter is at sea; along with the pathetic mistake in 'bihongen hrimghicelum; haegl scurum flaeg' ('hung with icicles; hail flew in storms' - the intensity is conveyed particularly through 'scur' which commonly means a metaphorical rain of blows as well as a literal storm) the Maritime is 'winem gum bidroren' , deprived of dear relatives. The use of "bidroren" informs the reader that he once had relatives but has lost them, and this vividsense of loss is also intensified by the fact that The Wanderer also uses this word in "dreame bidrorene", referring to rulers who lie deprived of all joys, and used in that phrase is a common motif for elegiac poetry of English ancient, which communicates tragic mourning and the recognition of transitory nature. The homiletic formula 'ubi sunt' is also represented here, through lines 80-86.'Dagas sind gewitene, ealle onmedlan eorþan rices; Nearon nu cyningas ne caseras ne goldgiefan swylce iu wæron, þonne hi mæst mid him mærþa gefremedon ond on dryhtlicestum dome lifdon.Gedroren is þeos duguð eal; dreamas sind gewitene." Although "ubi sunt" derives from Latin poetry, the lament for greater days here is expressed in terms with a specific meaning for an audience familiar with Germanic heroic poetry, especially the mention of "glorious deeds " and "magnificent fame." '. With this familiarity, The Seafarer makes the story of a man alone in the harsh elements, separated from his past by a literal distance and a complete difference in circumstances, more relevant by reminding its audience that the the familiar and the great alike vanish and become the inaccessible past. The Wanderer poet also has another reference to a past to which he is not tied, and which is therefore truly foreign to him: the phrase 'eald enta geweorc' (present). also in another Exeter Book elegy, 'The Ruin' ) was used primarily to discuss Roman ruins for which there was widespread Anglo-Saxon admiration, but could refer to any relic of an ancient culture. In the context of line 87, the speaker of The Wanderer is imagining the ways of death encountered by its inhabitants: destroyed by battle, torn to pieces by the wolf, buried by another grieving warrior. Christine Fell argues that this implicitly Roman architecture and these universal rather than specific descriptions of death provide a contrast to the deliberately Anglo-Saxon rhetorical laments for the giver of treasures or the joys of the hall (in the already discussed "Hwær" movement). The Roman past evokes reflections on transience and mortality; the Anglo-Saxon specificity therefore forces the audience to apply those thoughts of inadequate and earthly to the context of their own culture. Another interpretation of the historical context is that the Wanderer's speaker is now as distant from his own past as he is from a cultural past he has never experienced: the poem didactically advises that a man who finds himself faced with the 'eald enta geweorc' and reflecting wisely on it would recall a large number of massacres ("feor oft gemon wælsleahta worn" - the prominent position of "feor" after the caesura once again highlighting his distance from his past). The vagueness surrounding these massacres implies that he remembers both the battles he actually experienced and the battles of a long-vanished civilization through common memory; they are the same for him now, since he is so far from his past. Riedinger argued that Christianity in early medieval manuscript poetry complicates the theme of home, as the poets in both The Sailor and The Wanderer treat it as an elusive object of desire due to the simultaneous desire for a secure home on earth and a home eternal beyond that. In both of these poems the comforting home of the past is left behind for their current exile, which could be seen as a path or pilgrimage to heaven; in The Seafarer in particular, the presence of Christianity seems to cancel or supplant the past. In lines 100-101 the poet describes how gold collected during someone's time on earth would not help him if his soul was full of sins before God: ne mæg bære sawle be bib synna ful gold to geoce for Godesegsan'. “synna ful” at the end of the verse also juxtaposes it with “gold,” demonstrating through comparison the insignificance of earthly matters. However, the implication of God's wrath in dealing with a sin-filled life contradicts a complete rejection of the past; the previous verses have described the loss caused by the abasement of glory ("Blæd is gehnæged") and the old age that comes upon every man, stripping him of his old friends ("yldo him on fare" – the subject "yldo" and the verb " do" surrounding the object to convey total defeat on all sides). This loss of the world they knew, through old age and ultimately death, would seem to make the past completely irrelevant: the kingdom of heaven cannot be affected by what you materially gather on earth. This mention of sins brought before God, on the other hand, demonstrates that while the possessions and people of your past are now relics of a foreign country, the contents of your soul remain ruined or blessed by your actions during life, making it so your past is still relevant in the afterlife. Even as the practical luxuries of “ealle onmedlan eorban rices” (all the pomp of the kingdoms of the earth) fade, the past and your actions matter as the speaker emphasizes the importance of a hypothetical man who is “gewis werum, wisum claene "- trustworthy in his promises and clean in his ways, to reach heaven. Man's past actions define the kind of moral character he will present to judgment in the afterlife. This direct Christian admonition ultimately provides context to the misery of exile in relation to the elements described from the beginning; ultimately it doesn't care about earthly matters enjoyed by those on earth, because none of it affects a path to heaven as only morality can. The presentation of Christianity at the climax of The Wanderer similarly influences how the speaker's relationship to the past is presented. . As Bjork argues, the poem works in an envelope pattern, developing the scale from personal experience to universal truths as its central speaker progresses from 'anhaga' or 'eardstapa' to 'snottor on mode' sitting aside in secret meditation ( "sundor aet runa') and accepting both the transience of earthly matters and the reality of his own destiny. In this way, the Wanderer transforms his hopeless exile and directionless of the Germanic tradition on a journey to the heaven of Christian exile and draws hope from being separated from his past This interpretation of the poem that traces his acceptance of the unattainability of his past explains the journey from specific despair (the description initial of 'eardstapa' as 'earfeþa gemyndig, wraþra wælsleahta, winemæga hryre' a triadic structure of absolute misery that intensifies in specificity naming his miseries, the battles that caused him pain, and then the death of relatives as the reason why the battles caused him pain) to assure that "it will go well with him", which could otherwise be read as contradictory. Acceptance of one's fate, however, could also be seen purely as a rejection of the past society of which one was a part: rather than a serene acceptance of heaven as ultimately more important after meditation, the conclusion could be the decision to eliminate any connection with his past because of the pain it is causing him during his current exile. Even if this reaction continued the bitter and sorrowful tone from earlier in the poem more cohesively, Bjork's interpretation of a reasoned meditation on transience is probably correct as the conclusion is a sincere affirmation of the Christian "I am" or "mercy" , and supports the theme of 73 (1989), 119-129.