226 | ||||||||
•XXIII. THE. WANDEREB. | ||||||||
The poem entitled the "Wanderer" is representative of the lyrics produced in the first (Anglian) period of Anglo-Saxon literature. Tie ' dominant note is that of sadness. The poet is full of the sorrows, of bereavement and of exile ; he laments the death of protectors and of friends, the passing away of the joys of comradeship ; his delusive . dreams of past happiness deepen by contrast the gloom of the desolate reality wrought by death, change and devastation, But although a man cannot withstand fate, lie can 'in distress practise the restraint and resignation of the tn\e hero. In the " Battle of MaMon " the relation between a lord .and his men is seen, under tiie severest test ; the " Wanderer," t>y the indirect touches of longing recollection, draws a picture of the wmMatus in the joyous hall of the gift-dispensing lord. . The authorship of the poem is undetermined ; there is no reason for assigning i't to Cynewull 160, 7. — hryre. "We should expect hryres, gen. depending on gemyndig (Holthansea), - , • '. . lēl, 4. — mlane wisse is perhaps best translated by 'niay show (wltan) favor,' There is difficulty with the unusual word nilnne.* Thorpe first suggested minne (for MS. mine), and Slevsrs, on metrical grounds, has accepted it; Kluge, however, substitutes mildse, and Holthansen suggests mildae. Sweet, in violation of metrical require- ments, retains , mine, (or myne), to which he gives the meaning- ' memory, love.' ,182, 28. — fugel. According to īhorpe fugel is here used figura- tively to denote 'ship'; of. the simile in the Beowulf (1. 218), flota fāmighēals fugle gelicost, 'the foamy-necked sWp most like to a bird.' But see Modern Language Notes, Vol. XIII,, p. 176. 163, 1.— ælda (sēlda), Anglian ; S. 169, 2, | ||||||||
XXIV. THE FEKENĪX. The first,part of the Anglo-Saxon "Phoenix" (11. 1-380) is an adaptation or paraphrase of a Latin poem attributed to Lāctantius Firmianus (4th century). In Teafiel's History of Latin Literatim.- | ||||||||