Life and Land in Anglo-Saxon England

This is a quotation from an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem, preserved in an 11th-century manuscript, which gives advice to an unknown reader on living a good and moral life. The poem’s outlook is expressly Christian, but here it uses a metaphor taken from the secular world: it imagines death as like being evicted, forced to leave your ‘temporary dwelling’ and settle in a new home at the will of an inscrutable landlord. The reader is reminded that their life on earth is like a house that does not belong to them, which they will have to leave one day.