Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book/Annotated/10

Soul and Body. The guest is the soul; the servant, and brother, the body; they will both be harmed when they leave the earth. The mother and sister are the earth: mother since the body is dust, and sister since body and soul have the same father, God. This is a rather ambitious one, but metrically inferior. More often than is usually the case the word-order is determined by the alliteration. In l. 12 the guest is called &ldquo;comer,&rdquo; apparently for the alliteration; in the last lines the alliteration falls on the weak words &ldquo;or,&rdquo; &ldquo;of.&rdquo; The first three lines read literally: &lsquo;I know a lordly dear to nobles guest in dwellings whom grim cannot hunger harm.&rsquo;