Poem #3 Close Reading

Though the speaker spends the first eight lines of the poem issuing commands to usher in, what is presumably, the resurrection of the dead (as alluded to in Revelations), there is a significant change of attitude when he begins to address God as “Lord” in line 9. The beginning of poem, containing authoritative calls to “blow your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise from death, you…souls,” initially leads the reader to believe that the speaker is wholly in control. God is a distant but assumed figure in the background until the speaker appeals to him directly. Relinquishing any illusions of power, the speaker asks his “Lord” to “let them sleep,” acknowledging God’s power over the timing of the events. He knows that to let the dead continue sleeping gives him time to strengthen his bid for Heaven. Sin bars his way. With mounting urgency, he charges God to teach him how to repent. For the speaker, repentance, regret for past wrongs, is “as good as if Thou hadst seal’d my pardon with Thy blood.” This last line of the poem expresses a continuing anxiety about the speaker’s assurance of salvation. Repentance is “as good” but the not the same as God’s pardon. Yet, in his finite understanding, the speaker cannot be sure. He knows that the blood of Christ is the only way he can achieve pardon and he doubts his ability as a penitent. The poem shifts from the impersonal resurrection of the body to focus on the personal resurrection of one soul through repentance, a question of salvation from not only physical death and all its causes, but also the internal turmoil experienced by the speaker.