The Seafarer (poem)

The Seafarer is an Old English poem giving a first-person account of a man alone on the sea. The poem consists of 124 lines, followed by the single word "Amen" and is recorded only at folios 81 verso - 83 recto of the Exeter Book, one of the four surviving manuscripts of Old English poetry. It has most often, though not always, been categorised as an elegy, a poetic genre commonly assigned to a particular group of Old English poems.

Much scholarship suggests that the poem is told from the point of view of an old seafarer, who is reminiscing and evaluating his life as he has lived it. The seafarer describes the desolate hardships of life on the wintry sea. He describes the anxious feelings, cold-wetness, and solitude of the sea voyage in contrast to life on land where men are surrounded by kinsmen, free from dangers, and full on food and wine. The climate on land then begins to resemble that of the wintry sea, and the speaker shifts his tone from the dreariness of the winter voyage and begins to describe his yearning for the sea. Time passes through the seasons from winter — “it snowed from the north” — to spring — “groves assume blossoms” — and to summer — “the cuckoo forebodes, or forewarns”.

Then the speaker again shifts, this time not in tone, but in subject matter. The sea is no longer explicitly mentioned; instead the speaker preaches about steering a steadfast path to heaven. He asserts that “earthly happiness will not endure", that men must oppose “the devil with brave deeds”, and that earthly wealth cannot travel to the afterlife nor can it benefit the soul after a man's death.

The poem ends with a series of gnomic statements about God, eternity, and self-control. The poem then ends with the single word "Amen".

Many scholars think of the seafarer's narration of his experiences as an exemplum, used to make a moral point and to persuade his hearers of the truth of his words. It has been proposed that this poem demonstrates the fundamental Anglo-Saxon belief that life is shaped by fate. In The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 1975, Eric Stanley pointed out that Henry Sweet’s Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon Poetry in W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of Warton’s History of English Poetry, 1871, expresses a typical 19th century pre-occupation with “fatalism” in the Old English elegies. Another understanding was offered in the Cambridge Old English Reader, namely that the poem is essentially concerned to state: "Let us (good Christians, that is) remind ourselves where our true home lies and concentrate on getting there"

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