Among the few manuscripts containing Old English verse that have survived the ravages of time, The Exeter Book seems to contain the most famous Old English works known today. It is this Exeter Manuscript that contains the two compositions, namely "The Wanderer" and "The Wife's Lament" that I find of particular interest. The respective narrators of these two compositions are both in a state of exile. The way the poet of each composition explains the situation, relationships, and personality of his respective narrator is what makes the two compositions so completely different, and yet similar, all at once. In the following text, I will compare the similarities and differences between the two compositions mentioned above. The focus of this comparison will be the different ways that the relationship of a narrator and his or her lord is expressed and perceived.
             Both "The Wanderer" and "The Wife's Lament" are good examples of the popular Old English form of literature called the elegy. As defined loosely in The Norton Anthology of English Literature (Abrams, 1999):
             [A]n elegy is a formal, and usually long, poetic lament for someone who has died; [...] the term is also used to designate poems on the transience of earthly things, [...] or poetic meditations on morality (2955).
             The general theme of both of these compositions conforms to this definition. In "The Wife's Lament," the narrator is a female and is mourning her desolate state of affairs, longing for the return of her "lord," that is, her husband. This is indicated by many lines in the translation by Alfred David which have almost doubtless female connotations. An example appears immediately as the narrator explains how her present situation was caused, "the man's kinfolk hatched a plot to separate us so that we two should live most unhappy and farthest from one another in this wide wo...