Comparing Three Messages From The Seafarer, The Wanderer, And

The Exeter Book

(Three Messages From The Exeter Poems)

The three messages from the Seafarer, The Wanderer, and The Wife’s Lament all have one great message from them and they can all also be about the same things at the same time. In the seafarer it talks about loneliness and how he has no companions on his journey on the sea. In the wanderer it talks about his hardships and what he went through watching the kinsman be slaughtered and ruined. In the wife's lament it talks about deep sadness and how her lord left her and sailed away. These three poems are all in the same union of the meanings and can all be ran together if needed.

In the seafarer from the Exeter Poems, when it talks about the loneliness it is talking about how he is all alone at sea and he has nobody to actually spend time with and talk to about his home on land. He thinks about how nobody will ever know the pain of being in exile in the sea because there is no one for him to converse with. He even thinks about how when the birds make their noises and he often thinks that they are the sounds of other sailors in a pub drinking and having fun. In the seafarer the man says “During springtime, when flowers are blooming and plains are green, the seafarers mind prompts him to depart on a new journey.” When he says this he likes to be at sea but at the same time he likes to have people around to talk to.

How he watched his kinsman be ruined and slaughtered and there is nobody alive in this world that the wanderer can share his thoughts and feelings with. In the wanderer he states “An ambitious man can conceal his sorrowful heart, but he cannot escape it.” In this it means that even though men are supposed to be the strong ones and keep everything to themselves, they are not allowed to ignore how they actually feel on the