It is a profoundly mournful poem, to the extent that it is an elegy, in which the author, an aged man, speaks of an attack upon his people that happened in his youth. In this attack, his close friends and kin were all killed, and memories of the slaughter have remained with him all his life. He questions the wisdom of the impetuous decision to engage a possibly superior fighting force: the wise man engages in warfare to preserve civil society, and must not rush into battle but seek out allies when the odds may be against him. This poet finds little glory in bravery for bravery's sake.
He vividly describes his loneliness and yearning for the bright days past, and concludes with an admonition to put faith in God, "in whom all stability dwells".
The structure of the poem is of four stress-lines of different lengths, divided by a caesura.
It is a profoundly mournful poem, to the extent that it is an elegy, in which the author, an aged man, speaks of an attack upon his people that happened in his youth.
Three notable elements of the poem are the use of the "Beasts of Battle" motif, the "ubi sunt" formula and the siþ-motif.
The structure of the poem is of four stress-lines of different lengths, divided by a caesura.
The dialogue between the Wanderer and the young woman acquires an almost comic dimension in that it reveals a tension between the Wanderer's transports of the spirit and the young woman's concern with the immediate practicalities of life.
The Wanderer's ascent was not achieved without the experience of a trauma -that namely which resulted from his encounter with Apollo, that most implacable of Greek deities, whom the Wanderer may have offended by his very choice of the dithyrambic mode, customarily dedicated to Dionysus, a mere demigod.
The reasons for arguing that the poem as we have it is not substantially different from the poem as originally composed can be summarised as follows: Considering the recurrent triadic structures in the poem, we would expect that a third strophe referring to Pindar would complete the triad of strophes dedicated to the poets.
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