The Wife's Lament Essay

According to The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, an elegy is defined as a poem which formally mourns the death of a particular person or in which the poet meditates on other serious subjects (BABL 1635). The word choice in title of poem, The Wife’s Lament, immediately sets a somber tone of an Old English elegy. The words “wife’s” and “lament” creates an image of a woman weeping about a serious subject matter. In the opening lines of the poem, the narrative voice states, “I make this song of myself, deeply sorrowing, /my own life’s journey” (1-2). The language in these lines echo a woman who mourns over her life’s choices. For example, the words “deeply sorrowing” describes the agony she endures. As the poem progresses, the narrative voice conveys the hardships she suffers both old and new, but “never worse than now” (4).

The voice states, “First my lord left his people /over the tumbling waves; I worried at dawn/where on earth my leader of men might be (6-8). The word choice in these lines paint an image of isolation and loneliness. After her lord leaves her all alone, she worries incessantly about him as he travels by the tumbling waves of the dangerous sea. She worries all day from dawn if he will return and the longing seizes her most miserably (14). Finally, her anguish moves her to set out in sorrow on a friendless exile to find her beloved. As she travels, she begins to reflect and complain about how her “lord commanded me to live in a country” where “I had no love ones or loyal friends which causes me grief” (15-17). Then, she “found that my fitting man was unfortunate” and “filled with grief” (19). The voice continually uses grief-stricken words to evoke a sense of melancholy. The words miserable, grief, and unfortunate create the atmosphere of the setting as well as contribute to the theme of this