The Wanderer(Charles Robert Maturin) conveys the meditations of a solitary exile on his past glories as a warrior in his lord's

band of retainers, his present hardships and the values of forbearance and faith in the heavenly Lord. The warrior is identified as eardstapa (line 6a), usually translated as "wanderer", who roams the cold seas and walks "paths of exile" (wrclastas). He remembers the days when he served his lord, feasted together with comrades, and received precious gifts from the lord. Yet fate (wyrd) turned against him when he lost his lord, kinsmen and comrades in battle and was driven into exile. However, the speaker reflects upon life while spending years in exile, and to some extent has gone beyond his personal sorrow. In this respect, the poem is a "wisdom poem." The degeneration of earthly glory is presented as inevitable in the poem, contrasting with the theme of salvation through faith in God. The wanderer 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". It has been argued by some scholars that this admonition is a later addition, as it lies at the end of a poem that some would say is otherwise entirely secular in its concerns; but inasmuch as many of the words in the poem have both secular and spiritual or religious meanings, the foundation of this argument is not on firm ground. The psychological or spiritual progress of the wanderer has been described as an "act of courage of one sitting alone in meditation", who through embracing the values of Christianity seeks "a meaning beyond the temporary and transitory meaning of earthly values".
A poem of great sadness and beauty, the Wanderer is the lament of an exile, longing for the lost days of happiness when he was with his lord. A wise man keeps his thoughts locked in his breast. He recognizes how all the world is fleeting, strong walls standing empty, rime-covered, blasted by storms. The halls are empty because the men are dead, carried off by war, by beasts, buried in graves. Where is the horse? Where is the rider? Where is the giver of gold? Where are the joys of the hall? Alas, the bright cup! Alas, the mailed warrior! Alas, the power of the prince. Time has passed, grown dark under the night helm, as if it had never been. Now remains only a trace, a wall, high and decorated. Spears took the men; storms thrash the stones. Snow binds the earth, the winter wind. Then darkness, the shadow of night, hail falls, men fear. There is much hardship on this earth. Fate changes the world under the heavens. Here wealth is loaned, here a friend is loaned, here a man is loaned, here a kinsman is loaned. All the foundations of the earth stand idle. Good is he who holds his truth. A man must never recite his sorrow, speak from his breast, unless he knows how to cure himself with courage. Well will it be for him who seeks favor from the father in heaven, where for us the eternal foundation lies.

A number of formal elements of the poem have been identified by critics, including the use of the "beasts of battle" motif,[8], the ubi sunt formula, the exile theme , the ruin theme , and the si-motif. The "beasts of battle" motif, often found in Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, is here modified to include not only the standard eagle, raven and wolf, but also a "sad-faced man". It has been suggested that this is the poem's protagonist. The ubi sunt or "where is" formula is here in the form "hwr cwom", the Old English phrase "where has gone". The use of this emphasises the sense of loss that pervades the poem. The preoccupation with the si-motif in Anglo-Saxon literature is matched in many post-Conquest texts where journeying is central to the text. A necessarily brief survey of the corpus might include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and William Golding's Rites of Passage. Not

only do we find physical journeying within The Wanderer and those later texts, but a sense in which the journey is responsible for a visible transformation in the mind of the character making the journey.