Carter Wittendorf ePortfolio

     This portfolio contains two revised essays from the semester alongside reflections on the revision process for each one. The first essay is a shorter analysis of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” focusing on how the structure of the Shakespearean sonnet shapes the poem’s argument about beauty and time. The second is a longer comparative essay on The Wanderer and The Seafarer, two Old English poems that use the image of sea-travel to explore very different responses to the loss of a lord.

     Both essays share a common concern: how poets use structure and imagery to develop arguments about loss and permanence. Over the course of the semester, I became more attentive to the way formal choices in a poem are never separate from its meaning. The revisions in this portfolio reflect that development. A reader should expect to find polished final drafts, honest accounts of what changed between versions, and reflections on the feedback and thinking that drove those changes.

Defeating Time Through Poetry

     In “Sonnet 18,” William Shakespeare explores the relationship between beauty and time, ultimately arguing that poetry has the power to preserve beauty beyond the natural limits of life. The poem develops this idea through the structure of the Shakespearean sonnet, using its three quatrains to build a progressively detailed case against nature’s reliability before resolving that argument in the final couplet. What makes this structure so effective is not simply that it moves from problem to solution, but that each quatrain contributes a distinct layer to the critique of the natural world so that by the time the couplet arrives, the beloved’s escape from time feels earned rather than merely asserted.

     The first quatrain introduces the famous comparison between the beloved and a summer’s day but immediately complicates it. The speaker asks, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” before declaring that the beloved is “more lovely and more temperate” (ll. 1-2). At first, summer seems like an appropriate symbol of beauty and warmth, but Shakespeare quickly suggests that the beloved surpasses it. The word “temperate” is worth pausing over: it implies not just moderate weather but emotional and moral steadiness, a quality the unpredictable summer clearly lacks. The quatrain structure allows the poet to introduce the comparison while also undermining it, signaling that the poem will move beyond simple praise.

     The second quatrain develops this critique by cataloguing nature’s specific failures. The speaker notes that “Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, / And summer’s lease hath all too short a date” (ll. 3-4). The legal metaphor in “lease” is worth attention: summer does not own its time but merely borrows it, subject to expiration. Shakespeare then shifts from the season to its central feature: “Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, / And often is his gold complexion dimmed” (ll. 5-6). The sun, described metaphorically as the “eye of heaven,” is inconsistent. By accumulating these particular failures, Shakespeare constructs a systematic indictment of nature rather than a casual comparison.

     The third quatrain widens the argument from seasonal imperfection to universal law. Shakespeare writes that “every fair from fair sometime declines, / By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed” (ll. 7-8). The repetition of “fair” enacts the very process being described: beauty pulling away from itself. The poem then pivots: “But thy eternal summer shall not fade / Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st” (ll. 9-10). The return of “summer” here is deliberate. Where the poem began by questioning whether summer was an adequate comparison, it now reclaims the word but transforms it. This summer is “eternal,” stripped of the seasonal limitations that made the original comparison flawed.

     The final couplet delivers the poem’s central claim: “So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee” (ll. 13-14). The word “this” refers to the poem itself. The couplet’s logic is almost circular: the poem argues for its own permanence within the space of that permanence. But the circularity is the point. Shakespeare makes the survival of the beloved dependent on the survival of the poem, binding the two together. After three quatrains of accumulating evidence, the couplet does not explain. It simply declares.

     Through the careful organization of its quatrains and concluding couplet, “Sonnet 18” transforms a simple comparison into a larger argument about artistic preservation. Each structural unit contributes to the poem’s logic, moving from the inadequacy of summer to the universality of natural decline before asserting that poetry alone escapes this fate. In doing so, the sonnet does not merely flatter the beloved. It makes a claim about what writing is for and why it matters.

Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 18.” Folger Shakespeare Library, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/18/

Reflection

     The original goal of this essay was to trace how Shakespeare uses the three-quatrain structure of the Shakespearean sonnet to build toward the final couplet’s argument that poetry can preserve beauty beyond the reach of time. The analytical focus on structure was the right instinct. Each section of the sonnet does something distinct, and the poem’s argument only works because of how carefully it is organized. Where the original draft fell short was in doing the actual work of close reading rather than simply describing the poem’s movement at a high level.

     The most consistent feedback I received was that my analysis stayed on the surface. I identified lines as significant without explaining precisely why. The most important revision I made in response to this was slowing down on specific word choices rather than moving quickly through each quatrain. In the second paragraph, I added analysis of the word “temperate,” arguing that it implies emotional and moral steadiness rather than just mild weather. That distinction matters because it establishes the contrast between the beloved’s consistency and summer’s unreliability more precisely than the original draft did. In the third paragraph, I also expanded my reading of the word “lease.” The original draft mentioned the phrase but did not analyze it. In the revision, I argue that “lease” reframes summer not as a natural phenomenon but as a borrower operating under a contract, which sharpens the critique of nature’s relationship to time.

     The other significant change was to the conclusion. In the original, I summarized the couplet’s point without engaging with what makes its logic interesting. In the revision, I address the circularity of the couplet directly and argue that the circularity is intentional rather than a flaw. The poem’s argument for its own permanence is made within the very space of that permanence, which is what gives the ending its confidence. These changes all came from the same underlying problem in the original draft: I was describing the poem rather than analyzing it. The revision pushed me toward the kind of specificity that makes literary analysis worthwhile.

Exile and Allegiance: Lordship and the Meaning of Sea-Journey in The Wanderer and The Seafarer

     The speakers of The Wanderer and The Seafarer both describe harsh sea journeys filled with cold, isolation, and emotional suffering. At first glance, the poems seem to present similar experiences of exile. Both speakers travel across icy waters, separated from friends and kin, and both reflect on the passing of earthly glory. However, their journeys are not the same kind of movement. In The Wanderer, sea-travel is an involuntary exile that follows the loss of a gold-giving lord. It is directionless wandering caused by the collapse of social bonds. In The Seafarer, maritime hardship gradually becomes something closer to a chosen quest, oriented toward a spiritual homeland and a different kind of lordship. Although both poems acknowledge the instability of earthly power, they imagine allegiance differently. The Wanderer presents earthly lordship as the foundation of identity and portrays exile as the devastating result of losing that bond, while The Seafarer redirects loyalty toward God and transforms sea-travel into a purposeful spiritual pilgrimage. When read together, the poems reveal a culture negotiating between heroic and Christian models of lordship rather than simply replacing one with the other.

      From its opening lines, The Wanderer establishes exile as the consequence of losing a lord. The speaker recalls how he “hid [his] gold-giving friend / in the darkness of earth” (Wanderer 22-23) and then went “winter-sad, over the ice-locked waves” (24). His journey begins not with desire but with burial. The sea is not a destination he seeks; it is what remains once the hall has fallen silent. He describes himself as “hall-sick,” searching for “someone in a meadhall who might know [his] people” (25-27). The emphasis is not on exploration but on restoration. He does not want adventure or conquest. He wants another treasure-giver who can reintegrate him into a social world. This distinction matters because it establishes that the Wanderer’s movement is reactive rather than purposive. He is not traveling toward something. He is simply unable to stay.

      The imagery surrounding the Wanderer’s exile reinforces how emotionally devastating this loss is. The landscape he travels through is repeatedly described as frozen and empty. When he awakens from dreams of his lord, he sees only “fallow waves” and seabirds spreading their feathers across the cold sea (Wanderer 45-46). The natural world reflects his isolation. The absence of human voices is replaced by the sounds of birds and wind. This technique, using the external environment to mirror internal states, is characteristic of Old English poetry’s elegiac mode. The sea does not simply separate the Wanderer from his community. It actively embodies his grief. Just as the hall once represented warmth, reciprocity, and belonging, the frozen ocean now represents everything that belonging is not.

      Lordship in The Wanderer is deeply personal and relational. The speaker remembers how in his youth his “gold-giving lord / accustomed him to the feast” (35-36). The hall was a place of shared joy, loyalty, and mutual obligation. That bond structured his identity and gave his life meaning. When he dreams, he imagines clasping “his lord of men” and laying his head upon his knee (42). This detail is striking for its intimacy. The lord is not only a political leader but also a source of emotional belonging. When the Wanderer awakens and realizes the hall is gone, the grief becomes even more intense because what he has lost is not just a social position but an entire way of being in the world.

     The famous section near the end of the poem brings this loss into sharpest focus: “Where has the horse gone? where is the rider? where is the giver of gold?” (Wanderer 91). The repetition of these questions emphasizes how completely the heroic world has disappeared. The “giver of gold” stands at the center of that vanished world because the entire social system depended on him. Without the lord, “wealth is fleeting, here friends are fleeting” (107). The poem eventually gestures toward heavenly consolation, suggesting that one should seek mercy “from the Father in heaven” (114). However, this ending does not resolve the earlier grief so much as coexist with it. The Wanderer recognizes the possibility of divine stability but remains focused on what has been lost. His sea-journey reflects that unresolved condition. It is motion without a destination, exile that does not point toward anything it can name.

     In The Seafarer, the speaker also describes winter hardship and separation from human community. He explains that he has “dwelt on in winter along the exile-tracks, / bereaved both of friend and of kin” (Seafarer 15-16). Like the Wanderer, he experiences cold, loneliness, and the absence of hall-companions. However, an important difference appears in his relationship to the sea itself. The speaker admits that “mind’s desire urges…my spirit to fare” (36) and that he longs to seek “foreigners’, pilgrims’, homeland” (36-38). Unlike the Wanderer, who travels because he has nowhere else to go, the Seafarer feels a strong internal pull toward the ocean. The sea is not simply what remains after the hall is lost. It is what calls to him.

     This distinction reshapes the meaning of the sea’s harshness. The speaker describes how frost binds his feet and how hunger tears at his mind while he endures the freezing waves (Seafarer 8-12). These are the same kinds of physical suffering the Wanderer endures. But the Seafarer also notes that the cries of seabirds replace human laughter, and the sounds of nature become a strange form of companionship (19-24). The sea’s isolation is not simply desolating. It also has a kind of spiritual intensity that the comfortable hall lacks. Hardship, for the Seafarer, functions as a clarifying force, stripping away earthly attachments and revealing what truly matters.

     This stripping away leads the Seafarer to reconsider the meaning of lordship. He observes that “Days have departed, / all pride of earth’s kingdom; / now are no kings and no kaisers / nor any gold-givers such as once were” (80-83). These lines echo the Wanderer’s ubi sunt lament almost exactly, but the emotional response is entirely different. Where the Wanderer remains in grief, the Seafarer reads the disappearance of earthly lords as confirmation of a larger truth: that earthly power was always temporary and therefore never a worthy object of ultimate allegiance. He declares that “hotter to me are delights of the Lord than this dead life” (64-65). The word “dead” is precise. Earthly life is not just transient but already lifeless compared to what God offers. This reframes the heroic world not simply as something that passes but as something that was always spiritually empty.

     The final section of the poem makes this spiritual direction clear. The Seafarer urges his listeners to “consider where our true home is; / and then let us think how to come thither” (117-118). Unlike the Wanderer’s exile, this journey has a clear destination. The goal is “the blessedness there everlasting” (120). The sea becomes a metaphor for the soul’s journey toward God. The hardships of maritime life prepare the speaker for this transformation by separating him from temporary earthly attachments. The journey that began as suffering is retrospectively revealed as preparation.

     When placed side by side, these poems reveal two different responses to the instability of earthly lordship. Both recognize that halls crumble and gold-givers vanish. Both describe exile across cold and hostile seas. However, they interpret these realities in very different ways. In The Wanderer, the loss of a lord leads to grief and endless wandering. The speaker longs for restoration but never finds it. In The Seafarer, the fading of earthly glory becomes the reason to seek a higher lord. One speaker remains bound to the memory of the hall, while the other reimagines exile as the beginning of a spiritual journey.

      Both poems appear in the Exeter Book, suggesting they circulated in a cultural moment when heroic traditions and Christian beliefs existed side by side. Rather than presenting a clean transition from one worldview to another, the poems reveal a society working through the tension between them. The Wanderer represents the lingering emotional power of heroic lordship. The Seafarer shows how that same experience of exile could be reinterpreted through a Christian framework. Neither poem fully settles the tension, and that irresolution may be the most honest thing about them.

     Ultimately, the distinction between exile and quest shapes the poems’ competing visions of belonging. The Wanderer’s sea-journey is involuntary and directionless. It reflects the collapse of the social system that once gave life meaning. The Seafarer’s journey, though equally harsh, moves toward spiritual belonging. By comparing these poems, we can see how Old English poets used the image of the sea to explore deeper questions about loyalty, identity, and permanence. When earthly lords disappear and halls fall into ruin, one speaker remains tied to memory while the other seeks a new form of allegiance. In that contrast, the poems reveal a culture attempting to redefine what it means to belong.

Works Cited

Liuzza, Roy M., translator. The Wanderer. Old English Poetry: An Anthology, 2nd ed., Broadview Press, 2014.

Krapp, George Philip, and Elliot Van Kirk Dobbie, editors. The Exeter Book. Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, vol. 3, Columbia University Press, 1936.

Reflection

     The original goal of this essay was to argue that The Wanderer and The Seafarer, while superficially similar in their imagery of cold seas and lost companions, actually represent two fundamentally different responses to the collapse of heroic lordship. The Wanderer remains emotionally tied to the earthly lord he has lost, while the Seafarer gradually reorients his loyalty toward God. That argument is still the core of the revised essay. What the original draft failed to do was develop it with enough precision and without repeating itself.

     The most significant structural revision I made was to the section on The Wanderer. The original draft contained two separate paragraphs that covered essentially the same ground, describing the cold sea imagery and the emotional weight of losing the lord without distinguishing between the points they were making. In the revision, I consolidated those ideas and introduced a clearer framework for the comparison: the Wanderer’s movement is reactive rather than purposive. He is not traveling toward something but fleeing the absence left by his lord’s death. That distinction gives the contrast with the Seafarer’s chosen quest a sharper foundation than anything in the original.

     I also revised my reading of the ending of The Wanderer. In the original, I suggested that the poem moves toward Christian consolation by closing with a reference to “the Father in heaven.” Rereading with more care, I think that overstated the case. The revised essay argues instead that the Christian ending coexists with the earlier grief rather than resolving it. The Wanderer’s sea-journey remains without a clear destination even at the poem’s close, and treating that irresolution as meaningful, rather than as a transition that has been completed, feels truer to what the poem actually does.

     For The Seafarer, the most important addition was close attention to the word “dead” in line 65. In the original I paraphrased the line without stopping to analyze it. In the revision, I argue that calling earthly life “dead” is a significant rhetorical move that retroactively reframes the heroic world as spiritually empty rather than simply temporary. That reading sharpens the contrast between the two speakers and gives the Seafarer’s turn toward God more weight than it had in the original draft.