Abstract
The Exeter Book poem, “The Wonder of Creation”, named in the standard edition “The Order of the World”, is at the centre of the paper. It is a much-neglected Old English poem, yet interesting intellectually, and often difficult. Vanity is important in it, idle lustas “vain desires”, are central to it. There is more in it than the negative teaching that all life is vanity, for there is hope of a better realm. The temptation of Vainglory, the seventh Capital Sin, worthless glory, is a theme in Old English homiletic literature: the wish for false joys is a vanity. That is a theme in Cynewulf's poetry and in the prose of the Blickling Homilies. That a life of prayer and fasting enables man to fight the devil is a serious homiletic message. Our First Parents experienced unprofitable desires. Original Sin is mentioned in this paper, but not every healthy, hearty meal shares in that fundamental theological concept.
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