The Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Wanderer," is an elegy. An
elegy by definition is mournful, mournful either of death or of the loss of a way of
life.
The tone, the speaker's attitude toward his
subject--the loss of a way of life--is mournful. If you have to choose from the list
you give in your question, choose resigned or bitter, but neither one really fits.
Mournful is more accurate.
Not that the speaker isn't
somewhat bitter, and not that he isn't somewhat resigned to his fate. You can argue
either one of those. But at its center, the tone is
mournful.
For instance, lines 99-102 show bitterness and
resignation:
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"...fate's decrees transform the
world.
Here wealth is fleeting, friends are
fleeting,
Man is fleeting, maid is
fleeting;
All the foundation of earth shall
fall!"
The speaker is both
resigned and bitter.
Yet, taken as a whole (without the
first and last stanzas, which are interpolations), the poem is mournful. The speaker
dreams of his friends, then despairs when he wakes to find he's dreaming. He is
"lonely-hearted" and spends much time reflecting on his past and pondering. He writes
that "proud warriors vanish," and structures he once knew "stand empty of life." He
muses on "moldering ruins." He remembers where his master fell while defending his
walls.
The speaker mourns, but is still thinking and
pondering and creating. There is life in the poem, and art. He remembers, and his
memories are vivid and possess force. The emphasis is on the past that he misses,
rather than on blaming someone or something, or on resignation. This speaker is still
alive and kicking, as they say, though he is in mourning.
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