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The Exeter Book poem, “The Wonder of Creation”, named in the standard edition “The Order of the World”, is at the centre of the paper. It is a much-neglected Old English poem, yet interesting intellectually, and often difficult. Vanity is important in it, idle lustas “vain desires”, are central to it. There is more in it than the negative teaching that all life is vanity, for there is hope of a better realm. The temptation of Vainglory, the seventh Capital Sin, worthless glory, is a theme in Old English homiletic literature: the wish for false joys is a vanity. That is a theme in Cynewulf's poetry and in the prose of the Blickling Homilies. That a life of prayer and fasting enables man to fight the devil is a serious homiletic message. Our First Parents experienced unprofitable desires. Original Sin is mentioned in this paper, but not every healthy, hearty meal shares in that fundamental theological concept. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I apply current ecologically centred methodologies in the humanities to explore the familiar image of the bird-soul in The Seafarer in close relation to the real seabirds that are one of the most striking aspects of the maritime environment of the poem. Far from appearing as mere background incidentals, the poet's treatment of the seabirds we first encounter resonates with contemporary ornithological knowledge, and suggests that they feature specifically as species that best convey the ascetic trials and endeavours of the sea-going speaker who observes, listens to and names seabirds. The curious essence of seabirds as creatures that are always at home on the seas, and yet journeying to a home elsewhere, establishes them as what I term "native foreigners", a paradox that highlights the seafarer's conflicting yearnings and reflects the difficult earthly/celestial dynamic in the poem's perceptions of the soul's journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]