The Columbia History of British Poetry Read Online Free PDF Page B

unbelievers.
In Juliana a wicked governor seeks the saint in marriage; she, devoted to Christ, spurns him. The Old English Juliana is not the somewhat deceitful beauty of the Latin life but a fervent Christian; her fiancé, no longer the soul of sweet reasonableness, has become a follower of Satan; the war between the retainers of heaven and of hell gives structure and meaning to this most abstract of poems. A similar struggle between saint and devil is at the heart of Guthlac A , the first of two consecutive poems in the Exeter Book about this English ascetic (ca. 674714). Having abandoned his former warrior life, Guthlac now spends a lot of time in the fens defending himself and his dwelling from demonic assailants. Guthlac B depicts death, a "slaughter-greedy warrior" and a "cruel loner," rushing upon the saint "with greedy grasps," unlocking his "treasure-hoard of life with treacherous keys," and finally, "stinging'' the saint with "deadly arrows." Death's victory turns out to be Guthlac'shis soul goes forth, encased in light and melody, into heavenly glory, a reward from his Lord for heroic steadfastness and strength. It is different from Beowulf's end, but not very.
Wisdom Poetry
"A man must be firm in wisdom and measured, wise in heart, shrewd in thoughts, eager for wisdom, so he can get his share of happiness among men," observes a father to his son in the poem called Precepts . "I intend to teach people all the time," warns the narrator of Judgment Day I . "Learn this teaching," commands The Order of the World . These remarks are characteristic of the large and somewhat amorphous category of wisdom poetry. Its concerns are with the nature of the world, what life

 

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is, how it varies, how it works, its rules of conduct, how to succeed. The individual poems in this group are often hortatory and assertive, with a preference for the deop, deorc, dimm, dierne , and diegol , the 'deep,' 'dark,' 'obscure,' 'hidden,' and 'secret.' Anglo-Saxon wisdom comes in the form of poetic catalogues, charms, maxims and proverbs, riddles, allegories, dialogues, andperhaps most distinctivelyreflective, admonitory poems, sometimes spoken by an "I" who relates his or her life experience. These latter poems, which include such favorites as The Wanderer, The Seafarer (famously, if partially, translated by Ezra Pound), The Ruin, Deor , and Widsith , occupy the second half of the Exeter Book. One such poem might be a quirk; twenty or so suggest a taste.
The works just mentioned, along with The Wife's Lament, Wulf and Eadwacer, The Husband's Message, The Riming Poem , and Resignation B , are urgent, emotional compositions, each claiming to report the speaker's true experience. These "elegies," as they are sometimes called, review the brevity of human life and joy, the transience of the worldhow time condemns itself, all man's endeavors, and all his edifices. The poets look back at a vanished world, at heroes who sought praise for their heroic deeds "until all departed, light and life together"; they tell us of loss, suffering, and mortality, and how the mind can steel itself against impermanence by not putting trust "where moth and rust doth corrupt." The poems tend to begin in vehement spontaneity, the outpouring of personal grief, and end in generalizations, as the speaker gradually converts raw experience into the perfect formality of wisdom. For some reason, the two poems that tell of longing and abandonment in a woman's voice do not offer the consolation of eternity, of a better, more enduring home. Three "elegies'' are distinctive in form: The Riming Poem is, as its modern title suggests, the first English poem to use end rhyme consistently. The haunting Wulf and Eadwacer has a refrain; the only other Old English poem so equipped is Deor , whose repeated "That passed over; so can this" seems to turn every sorrow told into an exemplum of misery overcome. The consolation is transience itself.
Wisdom poetry circles repetitively