1-2 The word ar can mean tangible benefits conferred upon a retainer by a lord, such as an estate or a living from a property; it can also mean ‘honor, kindness, mercy, pity’. The word metud can refer to a secular ruler or to the Creator, milts to the favor of a secular lord or to divine mercy. The diction of the poem works on secular and religious levels.

5 MS ared.

7 One might expect hryre, which is a dative or accusative form, to be a genitive, in apposition to earfeþa and wælsleahta, governed by gemyndig. However, if we take hryre as a dative of attendant circumstance, the phrase winemæga hryre can be understood as an adverbial phrase that qualifies the slaughter—it was slaughter involving the fall of dear and loyal companions (cf. Pope, Seven Old English Poems, p.81, for examples). Alternatively, the phrase winemæga hryre could be understood as completing the verb-phrase: Swa cwæð eardstapa ... winemæga hryre ("So spoke the wanderer ... concerning the fall of dear kinsmen") with a parenthetic clause describing the wanderer —earfeþa gemyndig, wraþra wealsleahta— interrupting the verb-phrase.

9-11 Nis nu cwicra nan...asecgan. This sentence does not mean simply that everyone is now dead to whom he could have ventured to entrust his thoughts, but that he has some reason now to fear speaking openly.

14 MS healdne. Healdne does not make good sense; the verb-phrases are symmetrical: (ferðlocan ... binde || healde ... hordcofan).

15-16 werig mod are set out here as two words and not as a compound noun meaning 'weary-minded one' because of the clear parallelism with hreo hyge in the next line of the poem with which this line is paired, and because indeliberate, volatile states of mind appear in several contexts in the poem (cf. werig mod, hreo hyge, hatheort, hreþra gehygd, collen ferð [not collenferð —see note on the word spacing in folio 77b line 5 and the discussion of collen ferð below]. Moreover, this sentence is gnomic, and substantival compounds such as werigmod, which are proper to a kind of "heightened" poetic diction, are not typically found in gnomic utterance, which tends towards a more rudimentary style.

22 MS mine. The form mine might be explained by the proximity of ...wine in goldwine; a singular is required.

23 MS heolstre. The parenthetic clause —oft earmcearig eðle bidæled freomægum feor— is a coda, announcing the end of the passage. Siþþan begins a new section (see the Introduction: §Syntax). The pronoun ic (l. 19) is too remote to be the subject of biwrah. Moreover, the intensive prefix bi- imparts to the verb wrihan the sense of "entirely around"; heolstor ('darkness') is therefore an appropriate subject for the verb biwrah —earth's darkness enveloped my gold-lord.

24 MS waþena. Cf. line 57.

27 wisse is the 3rd sg. pret. subj. of witan, 'to know (of), be aware (of)'. Taking mine as the acc. sg. fem. of mín, translate "who in (his) mead-hall knew perhaps of my own (mead-hall)." The exile is describing the two possibilities as he wandered looking for a lord who might help him: a lord might be willing to welcome him if he knew something about the hall where the exile had been a retainer, or (oþþe) if he were willing to help a 'friendless' man. (But see B-T witan, III., 'should feel affection for'.)

28 freondlease makes good sense as a dative of circumstance (translate "being friendless"); there is no need to emend to freondleasne for agreement with mec.

The 'friendless' man is not only deprived of companionship; there is no one to vouch for his oath should he be accused of an offense. Cf. VIII Æthelred (22), I Cnut (5.2a), II Cnut, 35ff. See also John 14.18: Latin orfanos is glossed as 'freondleasa + aldorleasa' in The Lindisfarne Gospels and as 'freondleose' in The Rushworth Gospels; and Psalms 9.38: 'doem ðæm freondleasan & ðæm heanan ðætte no tosette mae gemicla hine mon ofer eorðan'.

29 ...wat se þe cunnaþ, hu sliþen bið sorg to geferan, þam þe him lyt hafað leofra geholena. The word wat is the first word of the independent clause; its subject is understood to be ic, carried forward from the dependent clause that begins (l. 22) Siþþan...ond ic. The exile says "I know [what it is like to be] one who comes to know how severe is the hardship|sorrow for a fellow, for one who has few dear friends". See Commentary, Chiasmus iv.

32 Protects him (the) exile-path not twisted-gold.

The verb warian has a number of meanings which could apply here, but the one which seems most likely is "to guard, protect, keep safe and whole". The gold given by the lord and worn by the retainer is a visible sign of their relationship; the retainer receives guardianship in return for service.

The simple ironic swap —in which a feature of the outcast state becomes a bleak ersatz for a feature of life within the hall—occurs also in The Seafarer:

Hwilum ylfete song
dyde ic me to gomene, ganetes hleoþor
ond huilpan sweg fore hleahtor wera,
mæw singende fore medodrince.

[Then the song of the swan
was my sole entertainment; the sound of the gannet
and the hoo-ilp's call were happy laughter;
the mews singing, a mead-song.]

This irony is repeated in a later 'scene' recounted by the wanderer in his dramatic monologue: his mind, weakened by grief and exhaustion, summons up a ceremony in the hall: he approaches his lord with open arms, embraces him, gives him a kiss, and lays hands and head upon the lord's knee, but then awakens to seabirds spreading their pinions amidst driving sleet, snow, and hail (39-48). This passage is discussed also in the Commentary to Chiasmus V.

The wunden gold—braided, or with an interlace pattern— is doubly ironic, embodying both states in equipoise: the gold is symbol of the safety of the lord's guardianship but its pattern is also a visible reminder of the convoluted paths one must follow when lacking that guardianship.

37-38  The underlying psychological subject of these clauses beginning with wat is always ic, though here the grammatical subject is ambiguous. The speaker will return to speak again directly of himself (58) after the generalized example of the geferan, þam þe him lyt hafað leofra geholena. The ambiguity is intentional, a rhetorical feature. See Commentary, Chiasmus V.

50  sare here may be a noun (instrumental) meaning 'with soreness, grief' (translate: "then the heart's wounds are the heavier with grief for the loved one") or an adjective (nominative plural) meaning 'sore, grievous' (translate: 'then the heart's wounds are the heavier, grievous, for the loved one'). The instrumental use of the noun ('the heavier with grief') is to be preferred on syntactic and stylistic grounds.

51-55 geondhweorfeð is here used transitively, with mod as its direct object. The lines may be translated literally: sorrow is renewed when men's memory sends (the) soul out, (it) hails with (its) glee-staves, eagerly looks about for (the) companion of men. The soul of seafarers swims often away, by no means brings back many (of) familiar saying-songs. With these genitive-plural/singular-noun constructions —maga gemynd, secga geseldan, fleotendra ferð— the poet is generalizing; in ModE one might use the indefinite particle and genitive singular, e.g. "a seafarer's spirit". The idea that one faculty of the mind or soul is projecting another faculty—or the mind or soul itself—out over the waves is supported by lines 55-57: cearo bið geniwad þam þe sendan sceal swiþe geneahhe ofer waþema gebind werigne sefan. See also The Seafarer lines 58ff. These unmistakable references to the wandererings of a disembodied soul invite the speculation that gliwstafum and cwidegiedda could be references to magical incantation and runes, or to chant and musical notation, or, syncretically, to both: to the pagan tradition in which disembodied souls have the magical power to converse and to the mystical communion of souls through liturgical celebration. (Cf. the Exeter Maxims I, 3: Ræd sceal mon secgan, rune writan, leoþ gesingan.) In any event, no such conversation or communion took place on the desolate ocean; and yet on another mysterious plane, a communing is taking place between poet and audience: the poet is also referring here— reflexively and metadramatically—to his own soþ-giedd and to Poetry.

53 MS swimmað. Bringeð hence swimmeð: in line 54b, no þær fela bringeð is a clause of negation of the kind that undercuts or puts an emphatic, ironic "reverse spin" on an immediately prior assertion; the verbs in each half of this sort of statement will agree in number if no new subject is introduced: "returns, but by no means brings (back) many...".

59 This passage is usually emended on the basis that gesweorcan is an intransitive verb and that gesweorce here lacks a subject because modsefan is not in the nominative case. But this could be an impersonal construction with modsefan in the dative: "it darkens with respect to my heart" i.e. my heart grows dark. Alternatively, if a transitive use of gesweorcan were available (cf. 'wyrcan') mod could be subject here with sefan minne as object (translate: "And so I cannot contemplate this world but that my thought darken my spirit."). This reading would split a compound that occurs not infrequently in the corpus—modsefa— into two words: mod sefan—though the word sefan does stand alone as direct accusative object in line 57 and if we were to follow the MS spacing here we should be required to present the line as follows: "... forhwan mod sefan minne gesweorce". The MS has separate words not a compound.

60-64 The adjective modge has a range of meanings, including 'impetuous', which is brought to the fore by its proximity to færlice ('suddenly'), dreosan ('to rush, to fall, to perish'), and maguþegnas ('young retainers').

65-69 Here are the lines that appear at the center of the poem (strike-through marking the interpolation):

Wita sceal geþyldig
ne sceal no to hatheort ne to hrædwyrde.
ne to wac wiga ne to wanhydig
ne to forht ne to fægn ne to feohgifre
ne næfre gielpes to georn ær he geare cunne
Beorn sceal gebidan þonne he beot spriceð
oþþæt collen ferð cunne gearwe
hwider hreþra gehygd hweorfan wille.

This edition prints collen ferð [77b-5] as two words, following the MS. The space between collen and ferð is more than five minims:

whereas the usual space between compounds is but two minims. There are only a few instances on these folios of a space as large as that between collen and ferð, and all of them coincide with larger syntactic breaks: feor feterum [76b-14], anhogan oft [77a-5], and feþra hreosan [77b-5]. The adjective collen, standing alone in this way, refers to a state of mind that compromises reasoned judgment—it might here be glossed as 'furious'. That a man should develop patience to master his emotions, lest passions cloud his thinking and send him and others to an unhappy end, is a theme central to the poem.

72 hreþra gehygd ?= "the passions' counsel", irascibility; cf. Beowulf line 2045ff.

74 MS. ealle is possibly an adverb meaning 'completely, in every place', and is meant to contrast with missenlice in the following line. As adjective, ealle agrees neither with worulde, which requires ealre, nor with wela, which requires eall. Translate: "The wise man must understand how ghastly it will be when this world's estate stands all in ruin, as now in divers places throughout this middle-earth wind-blasted walls are standing."

82-83 Sumne se hara wulf deaðe gedælde. Though the wolf is a commonplace in Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, appearing at the scene of battles to feast on the fallen, modern readers may find the literal meaning of this line to be opaque. The meaning of the verb gedælan is often simply 'to give (something to someone)' although with the preposition wiþ it can mean 'to separate (one thing from another)'. But wiþ does not occur in this sentence. Thus translate: "The gray wolf gave one to Death." Even if one should reject the personification of Death, there is no need to abandon this common sense of gedælan for more obtuse syntactic possibilities. A straightforward reading of the syntax of this line would take deaðe as an indirect object, recipient of sumne; we might translate: "The gray wolf consigned one to death." The moment of death, for the Anglo-Saxon poet and his audience, appears to have taken place upon dissolution of the bonds between body and soul. Judging from the poetry, this belief—or convention—seems to have identified the dissolution of this bond with corporal corruption, and entry into this state, it seems, would have occured not immediately, with loss of 'vital signs', but with the decay or the breaking up of the body. In Beowulf, Æschere is called deaðwerig. In Fortunes of Men the hanged man rides the gallows —he is said to seomian æt swylte— until his sawlhord corrupts. In contrast, the man who is burned on the pyre reaches his end quickly –lungre– getting his lifgedal while on the pyre.

85 ælda scyppend: The "shaper of men" or "arranger of the ages" i.e. "God, the Creator" or possibly "Fate". Fate is the agent of mutability in the temporal world, the weoruld under heofonum. Fate "arranges"; cf. wyrda gesceaft (107). See Book IV, Prose 6 of The Consolation of Philosophy.

86 oþþæt burgwara breahtma lease. An adverbial phrase; translate: "until, devoid of the sounds of citizens...".

88 þonne = "therefore".

89 MS deorcne.

88-89 the phrase wise geþohte 'with wise thought' is adverbial and parallels deope.

95 seo þrag = "those times".

96 genap may connote a sudden overshadowing; cf. Exodus (455): him ongen genap atol yþa gewealc.

97 The phrase on laste has both a temporal sense ('after') and a sense with respect to physical location ('behind'). The sentence can mean either that a wall now stands where the warrior-troop had stood, or that a wall stands now physically behind the warrior-troop. The word nu alone cannot resolve this ambiguity because time-reference is complicated in this passage by the interplay of dramatic/narrative-time and rhetorical-time:

Now we come to the part of the story where...

Nowadays a wall stands where...

Thus, the phrase on laste may well be used with both meanings, with nu functioning as a form of rhetorical scene-setting in the context of the historical narrative, on the one hand, and as a reference to the present day on the other. This duality places these historical events, and the poem itself, in contemporary context. The verse Stondeð nu on laste leofre duguþe weal wundrum heah wyrmlicum fah occurs in a prominent position at the crux of Chiasm X, which is the largest of such structures in the poem -- a 'weall wundrum heah' indeed. And so the wall is not only an historical fact in the context of the narrative, but a reflexive, metaphorical (part-for-whole) reference to the poem as memorial. See Commentary, Chiasmus X.

100 The parenthetic wyrd seo mære may be taken as an exclamation: 'Wyrd the Great!' or 'infamous event!'.

102 MS hruse. Hrið hreosende is nsf., subject of bindeð; an accusative form is required: hrusan.

107 onwendeð wyrda gesceaft weoruld under heofonum. A genitive plural construction, wyrda may be translated "of events"; gesceaft as "decree, destiny, ordained course"; onwendeð, when transitive (as here) means to cause a thing to change or change direction or to go awry, to subvert or pervert, to thwart or foil, to cause to suffer an undesirable reversal (see B-T on-wendan). The meaning of this phrase is: the ordained course of events (i.e. fate) is what causes the mutability of the world under the heavens.

113-14 cunne...gefremman = knows how to achieve an end; knows whether an end can be achieved. The knots caused by the apposition can be teased out as follows: ...beorn ne sceal næfre his torn to rycene of his breostum acyþan, nemþe he, eorl, ær cunne þa bote mid elne gefremman. To paraphrase: a warrior must never too quickly give public voice to his outrage unless he know beforehand that the resolution can indeed be achieved with a brave fight. Speaking 'from the breast' may incite others to take up the fight before the chance of success and consequences have been considered.