The Wanderer is a memorable example of meditation in a lyrical vein, in which universal rules are generated from intense personal experience. Though the context is unequivocally Christian, the poem is striking for the intimate allusions it makes to the conduct and ethos of the secular ‘heroic’ world. These occur notably in the retrospective brooding of the persona of the ‘wanderer’ himself (that being the widely accepted rendering of the word eardstapa in line 6 – literally ‘earthstepper’ or ‘earth-hopper’), as he mourns separation from his treasure-giving lord, on whose knees he once ceremoniously laid hands and head, and from his boon companions of the mead-hall. It is (or was) a world of ritual, good companionship and human warmth, the memory of which is all the more compelling in contrast with a forlorn present of coldness and isolation.

The Wanderer is a frame poem, which begins and ends with lines of explicit Christian statement – first about the availability of God' mercy, even to the abject exile (1–5), and last about the rewards of faith (112–15). Within this outer frame is another one (6–7 and 111), in which brief ‘stage directions’ are given, introduced by the formula swā cwæþ, ‘thus spoke’ – in the first place, ‘thus spoke the wanderer’, and in the second, ‘thus spoke the wise man’ (snottor). Enclosed by this double frame is the long central section of the poem (8–110), which, in the simplest interpretation, may be seen as the monologue of the wanderer, in whose reflective voice the poet develops his theme.