The line of descent of later English poetry from Anglo-Saxon antecedents becomes increasingly clear as we understand better where to look for the evidence; that is, when we recognize that continuity lies not in a direct line of literary influence, but in theme, in those sound effects most congenial to the language, and often in a heavily connotative diction drawn from the native elements of the language. The line of development is especially clear when the three elements happen to coincide. We cannot look to specific Old English poems as sources, particularly for fifteenth and sixteenth century verse because those were fallow centuries when both the old poetry and the older form of the language were either inaccessible to the reader or badly misunderstood. If we can trust George Puttenham as a spokesman for his age, Renaissance literati assumed that before the time of Edward III and Richard II “there is little or nothing worth commendation to be founde written in this arte (poesie).” Puttenham graciously attributes the decay of all good learning to the “martiall barbarousness” of the Norman conquest but in designating Chaucer and Gower as the first poets he demonstrates the lack of knowledge of Old English poetry which prevailed in his time.¹ He speaks in numerous instances of the crudity of the Anglo-Saxon language and describes alliteration as “pleasing to the rude ears of that barbarous generation.”² Yet the Anglo-Saxon poets of that barbarous generation prior to the eleventh century were setting forth with admirable poetic skill themes which have never entirely disappeared from English thought. Transmitted through a deeply rooted Weltanschauung and in the connotative cargo of the language itself, both of which survived the conquest, themes of loyalty, valor, and endurance, of loneliness and longing and Christian piety reappear from age to age in distinctly Anglo-Saxon form. The expression of theme is usually enhanced by a keen sensitivity to natural surroundings whose mood parallels that of the poet and reflects elements common to the national experience.

Such trends are not to be expected to any great extent in many of the verse forms imported from the continent either as translations or imitations. But occasionally a poet of clearly Anglo-Saxon temper adopted the borrowed genres and at the same time infused into them traditional themes and diction. This is true of a number of the gifted lyricists who, in the course of a century, transformed the Petrarchan sonnet from a weary and over-sophisticated continental form into a fresh and uniquely English one. Nowhere is this more strikingly true than in a few great sonnets of Sir Walter Ralegh. An English seaman who had known hazardous journeys on many seas, a courtier who had known both the rewards of court favor and the perils of its loss, it is small wonder that he gave voice to the elegiac themes which pervade the Old English lyrics. Two sonnets, which appeared side by side in the Phoenix Nest, “Like truthles dreames” and “Like to a Hermite,” combine the varied shadings of these themes into one dominant expression of the condition of exile. The former, often subtitled “Farewell to the Court,” deals with the unrelieved bitterness of involuntary exile in much the same vein as the Old English Wanderer and Deor. The latter describes the search for spiritual salvation which is to be achieved through self-imposed exile, the hermitic concept which is illustrated in Seafarer and a brief passage of the Penitent's Prayer. The second sonnet is an impressive example of the “Englishing” of a Petrarchan sonnet for it is an almost line-by-line translation of a sonnet from Desportes’ Diane which is altered to a remarkable degree by Ralegh’'s treatment.

The poetic concern with the subject of involuntary exile which provides the metaphor for “Like truthles dreames” has its origin in the Anglo-Saxon social system. Students of Old English poetry are well acquainted with the fact that identity was firmly based in a sense of locality, kinship ties, and fealty to a lord. Close attention to the poetry may lead us to think of these emotionally laden subjects as literary themes which had been preserved through the centuries in the old verse, but this is incorrect. This system of relationships remained viable throughout the Anglo-Saxon period and even beyond, and any disruption in them was not only the occasion of personal sorrow but actually endangered survival. It was virtually impossible for a free man to exist within the system without the protection of a lord of higher rank than himself.³ Although in most Anglo-Saxon kingdoms a free man who “had conducted himself rightly” (si eum recte custodierit),⁴ could, by due process, seek a new lord, he was not at liberty to “steal into another district” (on odre scire hine bestele) without being subject to severe penalty.⁵ Strictures were equally severe against accepting service of a man without the prior lord's permission, particularly if charges against him had not been cleared. A man could, of course, find himself in a lordleas state through no fault of his own, either as a result of warfare or because of an unmerited loss of favor as seems to be the case in Deor. In such cases his position was no less precarious until, again by due process, his kinsmen had taken measures to rectify his situation. They were commanded “to settle them in a fixed residence where they will become amenable to public law, and find them a lord at a public meeting” (hi hine to folcryhte gehamette 7 him hlaford finden on folcgemote). If his kinsmen would not or could not accomplish this he was judged an outlaw and any who encountered him could assume him to be a thief and kill him (hine lecge for deof se pe him tocume). There were, of course, penalties for harboring such a man.⁶

The role of friends and kinsmen in these processes casts some light on the fact that the word freond has a connotation well beyond the modern suggestion of personal attachment. It is used with the same strength as maeg ‘kinsman’ to indicate those who can stand surety for a man.⁷ Aethelstan uses it definitively in the preamble to his ordinance, presuming upon the mutual obligation implied: … eow bidde on Godes naman 7 on ealra his haligra 7 eac be minum freondscipe beode ‘… I pray you in the name of God and all his saints and command you also by my friendship.’⁸ The term freondleas is used interchangeably in later laws with the term outlaw.⁹ The condition, then, like the lordleas one involved considerably more than pathos.

In reviewing these attitudes as a background to Renaissance verse it is well to remember that the scope of Anglo-Saxon law extends far beyond the local custom of an isolated time or place. Aethelbert of Kent, in the first quarter of the seventh century, was the earliest Anglo-Saxon king to set the dooms of his folk in writing after the custom of the Romans;¹⁰ but the dooms thus set down, for the first time in a Germanic language, represented the accretion of many centuries of tribal law, transmitted orally by the guardians of order. The passages cited above represent the pronouncements of various Anglo-Saxon kings over a span of four centuries following Aethelbert, but they focus on the same concerns with a striking similarity. It is evident that a high regard for the lord-thane relationship lay at the very foundation of an ordered world. A set of customs so functional and so dearly valued becomes deeply entrenched in the outlook of a people, and given a certain continuity of history, is never fully erased from the national temper.¹¹ It is reasonable to believe, then, that a sixteenth century preoccupation with loyalty to princes, despair at loss of favor, and anguish over separation from well-loved places are the Renaissance manifestations of a powerful native tradition.

When we examine them side by side, it becomes clear that the eighth century lyrics and those of Sir Walter Ralegh express the same concerns, often in almost the same words, the only differences lying in the poetic fashions of their times. The poems go beyond the socio-legal aspects of kinship and fealty and reveal the intense emotional overtones of shattered identity, personal loss, or betrayed affection. The Wanderer in its entirety illustrates the points under consideration, but a few passages which lie between lines 22-55 are especially appropriate to the discussion. They portray the lot of the homeless one following paths of exile, dating all his ills from the time that he “covered his lord with the darkness of earth” (goldwine minne / hrusan heolstre biwrah) (22b-23a):

                    ond ic hean ponan
wod wintercearig ofer waÞema gebind,
sohte sele dreorig sinces bryttan,
hwaer ic feor oÞÞe neah findan meahte
Þone be in meoduhealle min mine wisse,
oÞÞe mec freondleasne frefran wolde,
weman mid wynnum. Wat seÞe cunnadd,
hu sliÞen bid sorg to geferan,
ÞamÞe him lyt hafad leofra geholena. (23b-31)
.....                    Forbon wat se Þe sceal his winedryhtnes
leofes larcwidum longe forÞolian,
donne sorg ond slaeÞ dsomod aetgaedre
earmne anhogan oft gebindad.
Þincedd him on mode paet he his mondryhten
clippe ond cysse, ond on cneo lecge
honda ond heafod, swa he hwilum aer
in geardagum giefstolas breac.
Donne onwaecned eft wineleas guma,
gesihdd him beforan fealwe wegas,
babian brimfuglas, braedan febra,
hreosan hrim ond snaw, hagle gemenged.
Þonne beodd py hefigran heortan benne,
sare aefter swaesne. Sorg bidd geniwad,
Þonne maga gemynd mod geondhweorfed;
greted gliwstafum, georne geondsceawad
secga geseldan. Swimmad eft on weg!
Fleotendra ferdd no Þaer fela bringedd
cudra cwidegiedda. Cearo bid geniwad … (37-55)

(… abject I went thence, distraught [mad] with the anxieties of winter, over the icebound waves; sorrowful I sought the hall of a dispenser of treasure, where I might find far or near one who would show me favor in the meadhall, would shelter me friendless [i.e., an outlaw], attract me with pleasures. He understands who knows from experience how bitter care is as a companion to him who has few beloved protectors [23b-31] … Because he knows, who must long endure without the wise counsel of his beloved friendly lord; when care and sleep both together often bind the poor lone one, it seems in his mind that he embraces and kisses his lord and lays head and hand on his knee as he sometimes did before when he [the lord] possessed the throne. Then the friendless man wakens again, sees before him the dark way the waterfowls bathing, spreading their feathers, the frost and snow mingled with hail falling. Because of this the wounds of his heart are heavier with grief for the loved one. Sorrow is renewed when the memory of kinsmen passes through his heart; he cries out with joyful song, eagerly looks upon the companions of men. Again they swim away! The spirit of the floating ones [visions] do not bring many well known words there. Care is renewed …

[37-55])(12)

The information detailed in these passages follows that gleaned from the laws, but the poet clothes the skeleton with lyric expression. Where descriptive compounds contain, in very compact form, the whole concept of noblesse oblige, they are accompanied by terms of endearment. Lines 38-39 offer a good example: his winedryhtnes / leofes larcwidum ‘the wise counsel of a beloved friendly lord.’ Dryhten ‘lord’ is self-explanatory as a reference to one of power, but wine ‘friend’ contains the meaning “one who is friendly and who therefore will help and protect me.” Leof ‘beloved’ adds to the expression the depth of the retainer's own feeling. The same point is illustrated by the embracing and kissing (clyppe ond cysse) of line 42; the scene probably represents a highly conventionalized custom, such as an oath of fealty, but the terms underscore the emotional coloring of the bond.

With regard to a continuity of diction, the cearu-sorg ‘care and sorrow’ complex has great significance, for the two words persist side by side in Renaissance usage. Cearu like a number of Old English words has a more forceful meaning than its modern counterpart; anxiety is a major component of its connotation along with grief and worry. It is introduced in the opening speech of the wanderer: Oft ic sceolde ana uhtna gehwylc mine ceare cwipan ‘Often at each dawn I had to express my grief alone’ (8-9). Sorg ‘sorrow’ is personified as a bitter companion in line 30, hu slipen bidd sorg to geferan ‘how bitter is care as a companion’; it combines with sleep to oppress the lone one in lines 39-40, sorg ond slaep somod aetgaedre / earmne anhogan oft gebindad. The words are echoed in a refrain at the end of each of the visions—the “truthles dreames” of the eighth century poet—Sorg bid geniwad ‘Sorrow is renewed’ (50) and Cearo bid geniwad ‘Care is renewed’ (55).

The prevailing effect of these words in the Old English lyrics has merited careful attention. Emily Grübl summarizes her study of the Anglo-Saxon elegies with an analysis of them on the basis that the fundamental tone of all the elegies is dominated by these concepts.¹³ Granting that the two words and their compounds belong to the same “field of meaning” she differentiates a fine shade of connotation between them. She designates cearu as the term for distress caused by external forces; that is to say, the misery an individual experiences because of his plight. This is consistent with the element of anxiety mentioned above which embraces both concern for present discomfort and fear of an uncertain future. Grübl interprets sorg, on the other hand, as relating to a deep inward state which “weaves a gray veil over man's entire existence.” She bases much of this part of her argument on what she believes to be a powerful personification of sorg in the Wanderer and Deor. She does not overlook the fact that cearu also is personified with equal effectiveness in the Seafarer: ceare seofedun hat ymb heortan ‘cares sighed hot around my heart’ (10b-11a). This is explained by the fact that the words approach one another very closely in meaning at times. However, the analysis of a fine distinction between them is a useful one in that much of the expressiveness of Old English poetry derives from a rich store of near synonyms. This is an attribute of English verse which has not diminished in later times but has increased with the enormous infusion of words from Norse, French, and Latin into the language at various points in its history.

Turning to Deor we find essentially the same vocabulary being used to present a different type of involuntary exile. It is the lament of a homeless scop who has lost his place in favor of another, apparently at the whim of his lord. He, like the persona in the Wanderer, contemplates the passing of time, but instead of dwelling on the despair which usually underlies the ubi sunt motif, he finds comfort in the fact that all things, even sorrow, pass away: paes ofereode, pisses swa maeg ‘that passed away, so can this.’ The singer reviews a series of tragic historic events, each followed by his philosophic refrain, then particularizes his own case in the last section:

Sited sorgcearig, saelum bidaeled,
on sefan sweorced, sylf um Þincedd
Þaet sy endeleas earfoda dael.
Maeg ponne geÞencan, Þaet geond pas woruld
witig dryhten wendeÞ geneahhe,
eorle monegum are gesc eawad,
wislicne blaed, sumum weana dael.
Þaet ic bi me sylfum secgan wille,
Þaet ic hwile waes Heodeninga scop,
dryhtne dyre. Me waes Deor noma.
Ahte ic fela wintra folgad tilne,
holdne hlaford, oÞÞaet Heorrenda nu,
leodcraeftig monn londryht geÞah,
Þaet me eorla hleo aer gesealde.
          paes ofereode, pisses swa maeg! (28-42)

(He who is anxious and sorrowful sits bereft of joys, he becomes troubled at heart; it seems to him that his lot of hardship is endless. He can then contemplate that around this world the wise Lord follows different ways. To many a brave man he shows favor, certain prosperity, to some the portion of woe. Concerning myself I will say that for a long time I was the scop of the Heodenings, dear to my lord. My name was Deor. For many years I had useful service, a gracious lord, until now Heorrenda, a man skilled in song, has received the estates that the protector of men once gave to me. That passed away, so can this!)

With the emphasis on narrative there is less sensory imagery in this poem than in other elegies. Its beauty lies in its structure and in the generalization of the last stanza, the singer's consolation to all those who like himself are sorgcearig. With Deor before us, we can see that it and the Wanderer, as representative examples of the elegies, have many characteristics in common. It scarcely requires mention that both poems conform to the conventions of metrics and alliteration demanded by the alliterative long line. This aspect of the prosody is so highly conventionalized that it cannot be called the hallmark of any individual poet. Diction, however, is another matter. Formulaic though the composition may have been, the poet had so many word choices available to him which satisfied both the alliteration and the metrical conditions that he was always able to alter tone or meaning at will. The two poems demonstrate what has been commented on before, the subtlety of expression made possible by finely shaded synonyms and by the process of compounding. In each case, the poet employs the practical circumstance of exile to dramatize a more far-reaching truth, the transitoriness of earthly joy. The Wanderer poet especially portrays the precarious nature of man's existence, alone and unaided in a hostile natural world. Finally, both poets find their answer to the individual dilemma in resignation. Deor acquiesces to the wisdom of God, various and inequitable though his dispensations are. The persona in the Wanderer begins and ends his lament with a submission to fate: Wyrd bid ful araed! ‘Destiny is fulfilled!’ (5b), and onwended wyrda gesceaft weoruld under heofonum ‘the decree of the fates changes the world under heaven’ (107).

Bearing these trends in mind we discover that Ralegh's sonnet “Like truthles dreames”contains all of them. Except for the distinctions in form it falls in every way into the tradition of the elegiac lyric framed in the metaphor of political exile:

Like truthles dreames, so are my ioyes expired,
And past returne, are all my dandled daies:
My loue misled, and fancie quite retired,
Of all which past, the sorow only staies.
My lost delights, now cleane from sight of land
Haue left me all alone in vnknowne waies:
My minde to woe, my life in fortunes hand,
Of all which past, the sorow onely staies.
As in a countrey strange without companion,
I onely waile the wrong of deaths delaies,
Whose sweete spring spent, whose sommer wel nie don,
Of all which past, the sorow onely staies.
          Whom care forewarnes, ere age and winter
colde,
          To haste me hence, to find my fortunes folde.(14)

The poem in many ways resembles Deor. The dramatic incident concerns exile resulting from loss of favor. In this context I read “my loue misled” to refer to political love, specifically in Renaissance times the love expended upon a fickle sovereign. The scene depicted in the second stanza suggests that the exile, instead of wandering, has been deposited against his will in an alien place, probably an island. Like Deor, he finds solace in a refrain; while his statement is just the opposite of that of Deor—that far from passing away, sorrow alone stays—it accomplishes the same effect. A certain degree of peace is attained by the quiet repetition of a gnomic observation.

The diction of the sonnet is strikingly similar to that of the Old English elegies. It is to be expected that a sixteenth century poem would display an infiltration of words of French-Latin derivation: ioye, expire, fancie, retire, companion, and others. But it is notable that both theme and tone are dominated by a vocabulary drawn from the native stock. The elegiac sorow provides the motif for the quatrains, while care is personified in the couplet. Like Miss Grübl's “gray veil,” somber Old English words weave a pall over the mood of the speaker: onely, lost, alone, unknowne, woe, waile, wrong, forewarne, colde, folde.

The theme of transitoriness is represented not only by “ioyes expired” and “lost delights” but also by a passage of time which moves through the poem to culminate in “age and winter colde” in the couplet. The spring-summer-winter of the fading year is self-explanatory; the parallel sequence of the life of the individual begins with “dandled daies” (2) and concludes with line 13. The curious word dandle is not traceable to Old English, but seems to descend from either Italian dandola or Middle High German tänden, both of which mean “to toy or make sport as with a baby.”¹⁵ Hence, “dandled daies” expands to mean those days in which the persona was as happy or pampered as an infant and thus underscores the bitterness of age.

The dual treatment of the passage of time implies a third concept which had wide currency in the Anglo-Saxon period and was dear to Ralegh’'s heart five centuries later—the belief that the world is not only ageing but deteriorating as it moves toward its appointed end. This notion offers an instance in which pagan Germanic belief coincides with Christian thought, the Nordic Twilight of the Gods merging with Christian eschatology. The idea pervades Old English prose and poetry.¹⁶ It is well illustrated in the Wanderer: Swa Þes middangeard / ealra dogra gehwam dreosed ond fealled ‘Thus this middle-earth declines and lowers with each day’ (62b-63); and further, YÞde swa Þisne eardgeard aelda scyppend / oÞÞaet burgwara breahtma lease / eald enta geweorc idlu stodon ‘Thus the creator of men laid waste this realm of earth until the ancient work of giants stood desolate without the noisy revelry of inhabitants' (85-87). This theme was familiar to Ralegh and congenial to his temperament. It supplies the controlling idea of the “Nymph's Reply”—“If all the world and love were young”—and is developed in great detail in the Historie of the World, both in the Preface and in Book V. A passage from the Preface in which Ralegh argues for God's power to bring the world to an end just as he brought it into being echoes the phrases of the Wanderer: “We have neither giants, such as the eldest world had nor mighty men, such as the elder world had; but all things in general are reputed of less virtue which from the heavens receive virtue.”¹⁷ It is reasonable to suppose that this belief underlies Ralegh’'s treatment of the transitory nature of human life and gives scope to his handling of the theme. A poem which is embittered, desolate, and quite likely topical in its references achieves a loftiness by submerging the private theme into the broader one; personal themes of separation, change of state, and lament for past joys are generalized by analogy to universal decline. The phenomenon makes private griefs bearable both by diminishing their significance and by casting them into the perspective of a divine plan. The analogy is implicit rather than explicit, but the refrain strongly supports the implication. In the downward progress of all created things sorrow prevails.

The companion sonnet, “Like to a Hermite,” displays a different tone, for in this case the exile is voluntary. The persona, like the persona in the Old English Seafarer, is choosing the life of selfdenial in order to accomplish his own repentance and a surrender to the will of God. And while the poem is a translation from the French, it is fully reshaped by Anglo-Saxon thought. It is only when we recognize the gravity of exile in Anglo-Saxon life that we understand the magnitude of the sacrifice and the quality of Christian submission entailed in this voluntary action.

The tradition of the penitential pilgrimage as a means of securing personal salvation dates back to the very early Anglo-Saxon period and may owe its prevalence to the practice of the Irish monks even earlier. In his study designed to establish the penitential lyric as a genre, P. L. Henry shows that the Old Irish term for pilgrim-exile (ailithre) is fully described in a Life of St. Columba (521-597), and that the longing for this type of redemptive exile probably motivated Columba's wandering to the north of Britain where he established the hermit monastery at Iona, c. 563.¹⁸ Similarly in her interpretation of the Seafarer, Dorothy Whitelock brings forward evidence that the same motivation provided the impetus for the great missionary movement from Britain to the continent in the ninth century.¹⁹ In both periods the desire for personal salvation is believed to have had priority over any intent to convert the heathen although the latter followed as a natural result. Following Biblical authority as it is given in Genesis 12:1 (God's command to Abraham) and in Matthew 19:21 (Christ's advice to the rich young ruler), it was not uncommon in the Anglo-Saxon period for persons of rank to abdicate their positions in order to end their days in Rome or some other holy place. Bede records many such instances, among them the story of the young seventh century nobleman Ecgberht]. The Old English version reads: Swelce he eac gehat, Þaet he a wolde for Gode his lif in elÞ eodignesse lifigan 7 naefre to Breotone ealonde hweorfan Þaer he acenned waes ‘And he also made a vow, that he would for God's sake live all his life in a foreign land and never return to the island of Britain where he was born.’²⁰

The laws attest that exile was associated with the expiation of sin in a temporal context as well as a spiritual one well into the eleventh century. One of the laws of Canute designates exile as a possible retribution for the killing of a priest: Guf hwa weofodÞen afylle, sy he utlah wid God 7 widd men, butan he Þurh wraecÞsid deopper gebete. … ‘Anyone who slays a priest shall be an outlaw against God and against men unless he makes atonement more solemnly by means of exile. … ’²¹

Whitelock's essay stands as the authoritative statement that the speaker in the Seafarer is a peregrinus, a penitential pilgrim. The passages supporting her conclusion are numerous and need not be cited here. It will be useful, however, to consider certain lines which emphasize the speaker's willingness to undertake the journey in spite of the bitter hardships he has described in the opening section of the poem. For example:

                                                  ForÞon enyssad] nu
heortan geÞohtas,           Þaet ic hean streamas,
sealtyÞa gelac           sylf cunnige;
monadd modes lust           maela gehwylce
ferdd to feran,           Þaet ic feor heonan
elÞeodigra           eard gesece. (33b-38)

(Therefore now my thoughts press upon my heart that I should seek [know by experience] the high seas, the rolling of salt waves; the desire of my heart ever urges my soul to go forth, that I should seek far hence the land of strangers.) And the conclusive statement:

                              ForÞon me hatran sind
dryhtnes dreamas           Þonne Þis deade lif,
laene on londe.           Ic gelyfe no
Þaet him eorddwelan           ece stondad.
(64b-67)

(Because the joys of the Lord are more inspiring to me than this dead life, the transitory life on land. I do not think that earthly well-being will endure everlastingly.)

The speaker's eagerness to depart from the ordinary and familiar world gains added meaning when the lovely reverdie passage is interpreted as an allusion to the theme of universal decline:

Bearwas blostmum nimad,           byrig faegriad,
wongas wlitigiad,           woruld onetted;
ealle Þa gemoniad           modes fusne
sefan to siÞe,           Þam Þe swa Þenced
on flodwegas           feor gewitan. (48-52)

(Groves take the bloom, the dwellings become fair, meadows are beautified, the world hastens on. Everything urges the one eager of heart on his journey, urges him who thinks of traveling far on the floodways.)

To read this cheerful passage as a presage of doom requires translating woruld onetted to mean “the world hastens on” (i.e., to its appointed end).²² The reading is legitimate in the light of the speaker's eager striving away from the attractions of the temporal world. Spring beauties urge him on to his journey by reminding him that all the beautiful created things in this deade lif are laene ‘transitory,’ literally “on loan.”

Yet when we put so specific an interpretation on the statement of a persona, it is imperative to remember that the realm of poetry is a realm of multiple dimensions in which we move backward and forward between the actual and the symbolic. The poet speaks through a particular seafarer, as he might through a particular wanderer or scop, to explore states of mind which have significance far beyond the particular. Scholars have demonstrated for us that the penitential journey was an actual journey, but within the poem it becomes the symbolic journey of a soul in any time or place. It is the deeply subjective involvement of both poet and audience in a theme which makes it the material for poetry, but that subjective involvement grows out of the fact that the symbolic circumstance could be an actuality of life. It is in this respect that Ralegh’'s “Like to a Hermite” draws on the same poetic material as the Seafarer. It is not so joyous a poem as the eight century one; its tone is more reminiscent of the cold alternative offered by the law of Canute. But a grim reality provides a metaphor in which exile, actual or mental, is, if not welcomed, at least recognized as the avenue to Christian submission:

Like to a Hermite poore in place obscure,
I meane to spend my daies of endles doubt,
To waile such woes as time cannot recure,
Where none but Loue shall euer find me out.
My foode shall be of care and sorow made,
My drink nought else but teares falne from mine eies,
And for my light in such obscured shade,
The flames shall serue, which from my hart arise.
A gowne of graie, my bodie shall attire,
My staffe of broken hope whereon Ile staie,
Of late repentance linckt with long desire,
The couch is fram’de whereon my limbes Ile lay,
          And at my gate dispaire shall linger still,
          To let in death when Loue and Fortune will.

Ralegh’'s starting point for this poem is the product of a poet whom Hyder Rollins has dismissed as a “wretched verse monger,”²³ but by altering no more than half a dozen words he creates an English lyric which transcends the limits of personal plaint and becomes a generalized statement of resignation in the face of despair. This is accomplished chiefly by changing the meaning of Love and by the gnomic use of shall. The uniqueness of Ralegh’'s achievement is made even plainer by the fact that two of his contemporaries, Breton and Lodge, translated the same poem with considerably less distinction.

In the Desportes original, the hermit metaphor is subordinated to the Petrarchan convention.²⁴ That the Amour of the first sentence is his frustrated romantic love of his mistress is made certain by the last two lines:

Et tousjours, pour prier, devant mes yeux j’auray
La peinture d’Amour et celle de Madame.

His garb, his deprivations, and his progress are not directed toward refinement of his soul but only toward surcease from love's anguish. Breton and Lodge follow the lead of Desportes in their paraphrases.²⁵ Lodge, like Desportes, directs his daily prayers to his mistress’ picture; Breton concludes with a warning to others to “take heede of Love, for this [death from love] is Lover's doome.” In all three versions the place obscure, the repentance, especially the prayers are to be taken no more seriously than a battle with Cupid in hundreds of other Petrarchan sonnets. In Ralegh's version, on the other hand, there is nothing to connect Love with erotic love. The focus is on the mental state of the speaker and Love appears as a spiritual entity. The evidence, again, is provided by the couplet in which Love, linked with Fortune in association with will, is elevated to the level of divine love. Ralegh's Love, then, is a metonymy for God and as such shifts the perspective of the poem. It is no longer a flimsy tribute to an idealized though probably nonexistent lady but a bitter reflection on man's doubts and disappointments as he struggles to submit to the will of God. Admittedly we are on shaky ground when we rely on Renaissance printing conventions for evidence, for they are often inconsistent; nevertheless, it is an interesting detail that Love is capitalized in each occurrence in this poem while this is not the case in “Like truthles dreames.” This offers some slight support to the argument that the word has a different definition in each of the poems although their background of political exile is essentially the same.

As in the other sonnet, the diction places this poem in the tradition of the elegiac lyric. The strongly native expression “waile such woes” has no counterpart in the French. The phrase ennuis et douleurs of the original provides the opportunity to introduce the traditional “care and sorrow.” But it is in the use of volitional verbs to handle the difficult problem of expressing futurity in English that Ralegh makes the most distinctive change in the tone of the poem. In the opening stanza he changes Desportes’ je me veux rendre to the much more forceful “I meane to spend my daies …” and thus establishes the deliberate nature of the hermit's choice. Following that, his sequential use of shall and will turns a necessity of language into poetic artifice, endowing the hermit's intention with a kind of Biblical inevitability comparable to that expressed, for example, in the Beatitudes. The writer of modern English is so accustomed to the empty use of shall and will as signs of future time that we tend to overlook the fact that English, like German, has no formal future tense. And while the transition between Old and Modern English usage was well under way by the sixteenth century, it was by no means complete. Old English indicated futurity by the use of the present tense; consequently, sculan ‘shall’ and willan ‘wish, or want’ had a number of specialized meanings in their own right. Since the denotative meaning of sculan is “to have to, to be obliged to” it is necessarily associated with inevitability. P. L. Henry refers to it as a “gnomic catchword,” and in his examination of the Cotton and Exeter gnomes he discovers more than a dozen finely shaded meanings, ranging in intensity from “the appropriate and predictable” to a statement of compulsion.²⁶ Strong residues of these meanings persisted in the Renaissance. Jesperson points out that when we attempt to investigate shall as an expression of future time we discover that “the underlying idea is that of fatal necessity or the will of God in determining the future.”²⁷ This aspect of Renaissance usage is attested by the Authorized Version of the Bible of 1611; the loss of force in shall through over-use as an auxiliary is typical of the kind of language change which has necessitated revision of the Bible in the present century. Old English willan had no implication of the future, and like shall, will has lost its original meaning through over-use as an auxiliary. In its Renaissance usage it retained the same force as the Modern English noun will.²⁸

It is in this sense that will (14) provides a climax for the progression of verbs. After the expression of intent with “I meane,” the sequence of shall clauses reinforces the sense of inevitability under the circumstances; the shift to will in the last line—“To let in death when Love and Fortune will”—takes the volition out of the hands of the penitent and surrenders it to God. He will be released from his state of exile when the Love of God and the Will of God work their course.

The implication of these linguistic details for Ralegh’'s translation is that he was not constrained by the auxiliary usage of these significant verbs but was somewhat more at liberty to select and arrange his words than the modern translator would be. He made full use of traditional usage and semantic residue to convey a tone of “fatal necessity.”

Another term which is common to both sonnets and which links them ideologically with the eighth century lyrics is Fortune used as a manifestation of fate. We have seen that it is closely related to both the love and the will of God in “Like to a Hermite.” In “Like truthles dreames” it is linked to Christian concepts by juxtaposition with folde—“To haste me hence, to find my fortunes folde.” In Renaissance usage folde does not descend from Old English folde meaning “earth” but from falaed(-od, -ud) which meant first “enclosed place, a dunghill” and later “a pen for domestic animals.” It became associated very early with the conventional Christian image of the stray lamb, the sheepfold, and the good shepherd, so that the connotation of a spiritual refuge became firmly attached to it.²⁹ The last lines of the two sonnets are basically variations of the same statement; both look toward death as the final release from sorrow and both look toward it with the faith in divine wisdom voiced by the Deor poet. The discussion is aided at this point by R. M. Lumiansky's analysis of the medieval understanding of Fortune. He has advanced the notion that “wyrd” as it is used in the Wanderer can be equated with Fortune as she is described by Boethius in Books II and IV of the Consolatione “where she is the fickle and powerful instrument of God.”³⁰ This offers another instance where Germanic belief has merged with Christian concept. There is no denying that the pre-Christian “wyrd” was conceived of as a force outside of and therefore above the gods, often perceived as hostile. After contact with Christianity the word took on many shadings, even that of being specifically associated with Satan. But in other instances it was thought of as the instrument of God's omnipotence.³¹ It is in this latter sense that the wyrda gesceaft of the Wanderer expresses the same thought as the witig dryhten of Deor, and both correspond to Ralegh's Fortune. In employing a favorite Renaissance term he is not departing from a basic Anglo-Saxon concept.

The final question arises of how much we gain—or lose—by turning such concentrated attention on two short lyrics and on so much that went before them in the life and the language of a people. The question can be answered in two ways. A first answer is that we always gain in understanding when we learn as much as possible about the materials, the words and ideas, a poet uses, for the knowledge enhances the meaning of his work. This is not opposed to the theory that a poem is a discrete work of art. Both the poems we have discussed maintain their artistic integrity even when we place them in a perspective in relation to other works. A second answer is that the gains extend well beyond these two sonnets and can be applied to many other Tudor sonnets. Much that has been said of Ralegh is equally true of other sonneteers, especially Sidney and Daniel who rely heavily on the native stock and native characteristics of the language. Careful attention to diction and theme is always productive because language, which provides the medium for the poetic art, is a fluid substance having its source in the distant past. Words always carry some vestige of earlier meanings and traditions even as they continually change. It is an awareness of the associations carried in these overtones which expands meanings in many directions. While this attention would be interesting and useful in any case, it becomes even more so when it helps us understand how a genre borrowed from the Romance languages became so thoroughly absorbed into mainstream English verse.

Notes

1. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, edd. Gladys Doidge Willcock and Alice Walker (Cambridge: The Univ. Press, 1936), pp. 59-60.

2. Ibid., p. 15.

3. H[ector] Munro Chadwick, “The Social System,” Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge: The Univ. Press, 1905; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), pp. 76-160.

4. F. L. Attenborough, ed. and trans., The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge: The Univ. Press, 1922; rpt. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), p. 144.

5. Ibid., p. 48.

6. Ibid., p. 128.

7. Ibid., p. 12.

8. Ibid., p. 123.

9. Felix Lieberman, ed. and trans., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903; rpt. Scientia Aalen, 1960), I, 286.

10. Thomas Miller, ed. and trans., The Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Pt. 1, EETS, o.s., 95 (London: N. Trubner, 1890), p. 110 (Bk. II, Ch. v).

11. There is written evidence that Norman sheriffs were still administering the country according to Anglo-Saxon law well into the first century after the Conquest. Theodore F. T. Plucknett, A Concise History of the Common Law (Rochester, N. Y.: The Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Co., 1929), p. 14.

12. Excerpts of the Old English poems are taken from the edition of George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, III (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1936). Because of the emphasis on diction in this study my translations attempt to account for all the words of the original and make no effort to preserve poetic flavor.

13. Emily Doris Grübl, “Abschliessende Zusammenfassung,” Studien zu den Angelsächsischen Elegien (Marburg: Elwert-Gräfe und Umzer, 1948), pp. 178-87.

14. Hyder Edward Rollins, ed. The Phoenix Nest (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1931; reis. 1969). The two Ralegh sonnets are cited from this edition because of its fidelity to sixteenth century language, pp. 77-78.

15. OED.

16. The importance of this theory in Old English literature is discussed fully by G. V. Smithers, “The Meaning of The Seafarer and The Wanderer,” Medium Aevum, 26 (1957), 137-53.

17. Sir Walter Raleigh [sic], “Preface to the History of the World,” in Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books, The Harvard Classics, XXXIX, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier, 1910), 112.

18. P[atrick] L[eo] Henry, The Early English and Celtic Lyric (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966; rpt. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967), pp. 29-35.

19. Dorothy Whitelock, “The Interpretation of The Seafarer,” Chadwick Memorial Studies, Early Cultures of North West Europe, edd. Sir Cyril Fox and Bruce Dickins (Cambridge: The Univ. Press, 1950; rpt. in Essential Articles for the Study of Old English Poetry, edd. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., and Stanley J. Kahrl [Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1968]), pp. 47-51.

20. Bede, Pt. 2, EETS, o. s. 96, p. 242 (Bk. III, Ch. xxvii).

21. Lieberman, p. 340.

22. In some illustrative notes following Smithers' essay James Cross develops this point fully, “On the Allegory in The Seafarer,” Medium Aevum, 28 (1959), 104-05.

23. Rollins, p. xxxix.

24. Phillipe Desportes, Les Amours de Diane, ed. Victor Graham (Paris: Librairie Minard, 1959), II, 207. The full text:

    Je me veux rendre Hermite, et faire penitence De l’erreur de mes yeux pleins de temerité, Dressant mon hermitage en un lieu deserté, Dont nul autre qu’Amour n’aura la connoissance.

    D’ennuis et de douleurs je feray ma pitance, Mon bruvage de pleurs; et par l’obscurité Le feu qui m’ard le coeur servira de clairté, Et me consommera pour punir mon offense.

    Un long habit de gris le corps me couvrira, Mon tradif repentir sur mon front se lira, Et le poignant regret qui tenaille mon ame. D’un espoir languissant mon baston je feray, Et tousjours, pour prier, devant mes yeux j’auray La peinture d’Amour et celle de Madame.

25. Thomas Lodge's translation appears in Scillaes Metamorphosis, The Complete Works (Hunterian Club, 1883; reis. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), I, 43-44; Nicholas Breton's version is found in The Arbor of Amorous Devices, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (New York: Russell and Russell, 1936; reis. 1968), p. 44.

26. Henry, pp. 93-104.

27. Otto Jesperson, A Modern English Grammar (Copenhagen, 1931; rpt. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), IV, 275.

28. Ibid., p. 244.

29. OED.

30. R. M. Lumiansky, “The Dramatic Structure of the Old English Wanderer,” Neophilologus, 34 (1950), 111.

31. Albert Keiser, Influence of Christianity on the Vocabulary of Old English Poetry (Urbana, Ill.: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1919; rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1967), pp. 59-62.