Line seven links together the half-lines by double alliteration. Even the puzzling last line is alliterative if we remember that all vowels alliterate in Old English. Whether they are in England or in Germany, the nuns and monks associated with the Boniface mission experience the kind of spiritual crisis that is called by later writers the Dark Night of the Soul. Without the developed mystical language available the St. John of the Cross, they fall back on the themes of their English poetic tradition to express their crises. The loving relationships bound together by letters and prayers must have had a special intensity and strengthened all the members of the group of close friends, separated by seas and long and difficult journeys.
Christian prayer strengthens the human bonds, which in turn strengthens the ability to pray.
An Anglo-Saxon Gospel, Opening of Luke, but not written by Boniface's circle, instead associated with Cuthbert and Lindisfarne. By Permission of The British Library, Lindisfarne Gospels, St Luke's Gospel, MS Cotton Nero D.IV.fol 139. Ed. and Trans. The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus . Cambridge University Press, 1985.