Poem 2

The poem begs the question "to be or not to be," and further, "how best to spiritually be?"

We start with an Eliot-like beginning: Spring has come to disturb Winter’s slumber. The speaker retreats into springtime hibernation, surrounding himself with flora and fauna in a covert/convert/convent. Like the speaker, the birds sing in solitude, suggesting a courtship motif. The boughs arch over the house, suggesting the cathedral, and the cool house suggests religious austerity. The sweet air whispers softly, as if the voice of God. Whispers, however, can connote devilish mischief, and we’re not so sure that the house is snare-free. Here, the poem’s chief ambiguity surfaces. Now the voice speaks of safety and solitude, and we think of the coffin. The stone has stopped rolling and gathers moss as its soul exits in a clear stream. The ambiguities come full force: the sun shines shadily, and the first five-line stanza appears. Now we scan the poem back up from six stanzas/feet under, read downwards once again, and our three-peat reading moves us to ask important questions about religious behavior.

Does faith in God send us to an early grave? If we live an austere life, are we robbing ourselves of the ocean’s gifts? Is the monastic life a cowardly life?

At first, we vicariously enjoy the speaker’s covert; maybe we even envy the beauty he experiences. When we reach the end, however, we see the corpses and rot beneath the beautiful descriptions. We are moved to associate esoteric subjects with nothingness, despair, and death.

We’ve done some good critical thinking, but we’re not done yet; we should give monasticism a fair chance. Perhaps the answer to the ambiguity is this: it is best to carry the covert with us on the unforgiving seas of life until we make it to the beach. Otherwise, we dig ourselves into an early grave.