Step 5 of 12 · Youth, Age and Learning
Man is the joy of man
Why this step
In stanza 47 the speaker looks back. Young once, he walked alone and seemed to have lost his way, then found another traveller and felt rich. The entry notes that “man is the joy of man” is now among the poem’s most quoted lines, but that the poem is describing one lost young traveller. Here an older voice remembers what being young and alone taught him.
The text, stanza 47
47.
Young was I once, I walked alone,
and bewildered seemed in the way;
then I found me another and rich I thought me,
for man is the joy of man.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanza 47 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
From the Lorebook
The speaker remembers being young, alone and lost on the road, and the wealth he felt on finding another person.