[2] In the sequence the swan has left the flowery land and is trapped on the ocean amidst terrible waves, unable to fly away.
[4] She prays for light to replace her darkness and, when the dawn finally comes, rises to the stars and flies to land.
[2] The Swan Sequence, along with the rest of Carolingian and vernacular literature, are borrowing from the patristic, exegetical, and liturgical traditions.
[d] To one medieval copyist of the text it was an allegory of the fall of man (allegoria ac de cigno ad lapsum hominis), to which Peter Godman adds redemption.
Other interpretations of the song include: An allegory of the Prodigal Son and an adaptation of the Greek myth of the holy swans of Apollo coming from the north.
It is found in Ambrose, Augustine, and Alcuin, and in the Old English poems The Wanderer and The Seafarer;[f] in The Phoenix of Lactantius, in the Dialogues (iv.10) of Gregory the Great, in The Consolation of Philosophy (IV.i.1) of Boethius, and in the Vita Sancti Gregorii Magni of a monk of Whitby (c.