The Wanderer Transience Quotes

Memory plays an important role in the awareness of transience. Only through a comparison with past – where hall-warriors feasted and received treasure – and the empty present does the speaker become aware of how much has disappeared, and with that, the joy that once existed.

The abandonment of the hall here is either a metaphor for death or a literal description of exile. Exile and death are similar in the way in which both end the presence of a person in a particular place – with death, in a human body on earth; with exile, in a community. Both death and exile remind the speaker of transience, how the earth "fails and falls."

The word translated here as "ghastly," gastlice, means both "ghost-like" and "awful" in Old English. It's a pun that expresses both the terribleness inherent in a deserted, abandoned earth, and the absence of the human souls whose memories now haunt it like ghosts.

The dual presence here of men and the structures they build – wine-halls and walls – emphasizes the way in which these two depend upon one another. Without the men to care for them, buildings "molder" (decay) just as the men depend upon walls to protect them from the elements and their enemies.

Lots of debate has occurred over what, exactly, the "old giants' work" might be. We know that the Anglo-Saxons lived among the ruins of Roman occupation, without the technology to maintain or re-build these structures. These ruins could be the giants' work referred to here. But in any case, the poem reiterates the connection between men and buildings. So important are men to buildings that buildings are "worthless" without occupants.

The words spoken by the wise man as he contemplates the bodies of those fallen in war are what's known as an ubi sunt, or "Where are they?" lament. In this type of lament, the absence or passing of all good things leads the mourner to an awareness of the transience of existence. Paying attention to what is lamented provides a pretty good indication of what's most important to a particular culture: here, the trappings of war, feasting, and lord/nobleman relationships. Line 97 contains a pun: the cover of night is called a night-helm, but helm is also a word for the helmet a warrior wears – a knight's helm.

Here the fate, or destiny, of creation seems to be to disappear from the earth. As was true of the abandoned buildings in lines 79-88, the absence of men from the world turns the earth-frame "worthless." This perspective reflects a view of the earth as simply the dwelling-place for mankind, rather than a place with value all on its own.