[2] = sceal.
[3] = hāten.
[ VII. THE WANDERER.]
[Exeter MS. “The epic character of the ancient lyric appears especially in this: that the song is less the utterance of a momentary feeling than the portrayal of a lasting state, perhaps the reflection of an entire life, generally that of one isolated, or bereft by death or exile of protectors and friends.” (Ten Brink, Early Eng. Lit., I.) I adopt Brooke’s threefold division (Early Eng. Lit., p. 356): “It opens with a Christian prologue, and closes with a Christian epilogue, but the whole body of the poem was written, it seems to me, by a person who thought more of the goddess Wyrd than of God, whose life and way of thinking were uninfluenced by any distinctive Christian doctrine.”
The author is unknown.]
Prologue.
Metudes[1] miltse, þēah þe hē mōdcearig
geond lagulāde lǫnge sceolde
hrēran mid hǫndum hrīmcealde sǣ,