Poem 1 Reading

The poem's argument is an interesting one, because--unlike other poems in the same vein--it is not so much an inward retreat in reaction to modernity and materialism, but instead a kind of retaliatory manifesto against it; the poem presents a bold statement of facts that attempt to rewire our understanding of nature, and to connect reality to a qualitative, rather than quantitative, system. The first two lines parallelism set up this transfer of emphasis from the outset. By line two, we understand that the mechanical 'breath' is at best only symptomatic of a 'great spirit' that truly constitutes our state of living, and that the importance of blood as a visceral material is wholly subsumed by the "busy heart," here representing not a part of the circulatory system, but filling its traditional poetic role as a hypostatized emblem of human love. These intangible virtues ("One generous feeling," "great thought") are given tangible power in the following lines where the poet endows them with the ability to extend life and time. The poem continues in a methodical fashion, providing the new units for the new system of life: deeds substituted for years, thoughts for breaths, feelings instead of "figures on a dial." The poem culminates with what comes across as the dictum for this new existence: "He most lives/ Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."

I want to address line three and seven at this point, because I find them to be the strangest in the poem, but also the ones that testifies best to this poem's underlying oppositional enmity. The poet writes, "The coward and the small in soul scare do live." This line interrupts the logical argument that otherwise runs smoothly from the start until the end. Line seven, while perhaps not so distracting from the argument, again makes a reference of condemnation towards the world outside the poem. It is these lines that really humanize the poem for me. We can see the poet and the poem in reaction to society in an explicit way, which, for me, makes the poem immediately more interesting than if they should simply remain as so much metaphysical musing in a vacuum.