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•The Seafearer :This poem expresses the melancholy and “the miseries of exile and penitential discipline (Stanley, 2009), life’s misery and life’s tribulations. It has no known author. Here is an piece of the poem translated into English:

Let me speak, in truth, of my life,

tell of toilsome days of travel,

days suffering hardship,

bitterness of heart:

how I endured sorrowful times on ships,

on dreadful rolling seas.

Hard night's watch at the ship's prow

was by frequent task,

the ship often tossed along towering cliffs,

afflicted with cold feet, numbed by frost, chill bonds.

My sorrows burned in my heart,

I sighed forth hunger that rent my mind,

I, the sea-weary man.