Anglo-Saxon Poetry Lessons for the Classroom

When we are studying the Anglo-Saxons we spend a day reading the wonderful Anglo-Saxon poems - "The Wife's Lament" and "The Husband's Message" from The Exeter Book.  When we get to "The Husband's Message" much of the poem seems enigmatic - in fact it begins with a riddle.  At one point, he mentions that she should listen for the sound of the cuckoo bird as a signal that she should return to him. I then remind them of the importance of every single word in a poem (one of my three rules of  understanding poetry) - so I ask them if they know what is special about cuckoos. 

This packet of Anglo-Saxon poems includes:  "Deor", "Summer is Gone", "The Ruin", "The Seafarer (trans. Burton Raffel)", "The Seafarer (trans. Jonathan Glenn)", "The Wanderer", "The Wife’s Lament", "Wulf and Eadwacer", and "Dream of the Rood." It is interesting to compare the two different translations of “The Seafarer.” Most of the poems include space for note-taking. I give my students black & white copies of individual poems as we cover them but make the color packet available for them to download.

Not really a lesson, simply a Celtic poem, "The Hermit's Song," and an Anglo Saxon poem, "Wulf and Eadwacer," (thanks Lisa!)  that I will use this year to supplement the poems that are already in our text book (or rather a copy of the old textbook as there seems to be less and less actual text in the newer books).

In these two Anglo-Saxon poems, "The Seafarer" and "The Wanderer",  it is interesting to see how each character responds differently to hardship and to a similar belief system.  This set of questions encourages students to notice both the similarities and subtle differences found in the poems.  The text of each poem is included.