Читать книгу History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne - Andrew Lang, Robert Kirk - Страница 11

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.