In "The Wanderer" there is abundance of gloom, but it is a less noble poem than "The Ruined City," for the speaker is in sorrow, not for the griefs of all mankind, but for his own. He is an exile, homeless, in fact a tramp, _Eardstapa._ He has lost his lord, his patron; and dreams of his kindness, in the old happy days; and wakens, an aged man, friendless, to see the snow falling in the ocean, and the seabirds flitting with their white wings through the snow. The house where he had been young has fallen, and he laments over the ruins. The Plaint of Deor. This complaint is also rueful, but it is manly. The poet calk to mind old heroes and heroines, such as Weland (remembered still as Wayland Smith, in Scott's "Kenilworth"), who suffered many misfortunes, but endured them bravely. The poem is in stanzas; each ending with the burden or refrain, _That evil he overcame_, _So may I this!_ It is like the often repeated word of Odysseus in Homer:-- _Endure my heart_, _Worse hast thou endured!_ One sorrow of the poet is that his lord has taken from him the land which he held as a minstrel, and given it to another singer. Now he is in new trouble. _That I surmounted_, _So may I this!_ Probably there were many other poems with refrains, or recurring lines at the end of each stanza; this is a very old poetic device; originally the refrains were sung in chorus by the listeners as they danced to the music of the minstrels. The Seafarer. In this poem, as in "Beowulf," the sea is spoken of as it would be by men who knew its wild moods; cold, tempest, biting salt water, danger, and grey waves under driving rain, yet the seafarer loves, it. The poet says that (like The gentlemen of England Who live at home at ease,) many a one knows not the dangers of the deep, while the minstrel has heard the swan sing through the ice-cold showers of hail and the spindrift. But the coming of spring and the cuckoo's cry, admonish the brave man to go seafaring, despite the distresses; they are more inspiriting than life on land. He is a Christian, but he falls back on the old melancholy for the passing of kings and gold-givers. Though he preaches over much, he still thinks of the bale-fire as the mode of burial, as if Christian rites of earth to earth were not yet adopted. Waldhere. Of this poem only some sixty lines exist. They were found at Copenhagen, written on two pieces of vellum which had been used in binding a book: it is common to find fragments of early printed books or manuscripts in the bindings of books more recent. One page of "Waldhere" contains a speech by the heroine of the tale, Hildeguthe, urging Waldhere to fight Guthere; the other fragment has portions of a dialogue between the two combatants.