Poems from the Exeter Book

The Exeter Book is a 10th century anthology of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. It is the largest collection of Old English literature that exists today. There are two poems from it which may appear.


"The Wife's Lament"


Essentially, the narrator is a woman who expresses her grief at her exile from her kin and her husband. She is doomed to poverty amid a wilderness and is also surrounded by hostile neighbors.


 The genre of the poem is an elegy, or frauenliend (a woman's song). 


It begins like this:


Ic þis giedd wrece .... bi me ful geomorre,
minre sylfre sið. .... Ic þæt secgan mæg
hwæt ic yrmþa gebad .... siþþan ic up [a]weox,
niwes oþþe ealdes, .... no ma þonne nu;
a ic wite wonn .... minra wræcsiþa.

Full sadly this song I sing of myself,
of my own experience. I can assert
what trials I bore, since I grew up,
or new or old, were never more than now.
Ever I suffer the pain of my exile.

Full text available at http://www.brindin.com/porodwi1.htm.

"Judith"

Judith is an old English poem on the topic of the behading of HOlofernes, an Assyrian military leader recorded in the biblical Book of Judith. 

It begins like this:

  tweode 
gifena in ðys ginnan grunde.         Heo ðar ða gearwe funde 
mundbyrd æt ðam mæran þeodne,         þa heo ahte mæste þearfe, 
hyldo þæs hehstan deman,         þæt he hie wið þæs hehstan brogan 

...None doubted the gifts of the Grand creator

to this great earth, where she had found help from God. 

When she had the most need of the Mighty Prince 

then God protected her from greatest danger.

Full texts available at: http://www8.georgetown.edu/departments/medieval/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/a4.2.html

and http://web.archive.org/web/20020205222339/http://www.dnaco.net/~sirbill/Judith.htm

NOTE the caesura - break in the middle of the line - in both poems.