Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. Stevens spent most of his time working as an executive at an insurance company in Hartford.
In 1955 he has won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his work, Collected Poems. His outputs came at a fairly advanced age than at young ages like other poets. His first publication came when he was 35 and then later most of his works were out when he passed 50 years of age.
Stevens was a poet of ideas and his work was meditative and philosophical. Throughout his career, Stevens was concerned of what to think about the world now and about old concept of religion. Most of his poems were related to religion and God. Sunday Morning is also one such poem that says about the rising of Jesus Christ and how it could be interpreted.
“Sunday Morning” is a poem where the poet speaks about a lady spending her morning on a Sunday. While most of the people spend the mornings of a Sunday at the church, a lady happened to spend her Sunday morning at her house, sitting outside in a nightgown having her breakfast and enjoying the morning.
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She feels a bit guilty for not being at the church, but with the beauty around her, she feels fine. However, she starts day dreaming and then she gets into very serious thoughts about the death of Christ and her traveling along with many souls to visit the tomb of Christ in Palestine.
Suddenly she starts entertaining skepticism about Christianity and she thinks why she keeps thinking about Christ and not anything else. She feels that even though heaven is considered with the ultimate comforts, she believes that the natural world also provides the same comfort, if one is happy and content with the emotions and experiences in life.
At a later stage in the poem, Jesus Christ is compared with Jove, the most powerful GOD in Greek and roman mythology. As Jove is considered to represent the sun and the sky, the poet thinks that the worship of Jove is an expression of love towards nature and the beauty of Earth. Here the woman is happy while seeing the birds and she fears that once the birds leave, then the ground may not be as beautiful it was and feel like paradise. The poet responds that the beauty of nature have lasted longer than the specification of paradise by any religion.
The woman feels that she needs to believe in happiness and beauty which would last forever. However the poet says that no beauty is everlasting and it is exposed to change. The change here is said as Death. But still when death causes one thing to end, there is a new beginning to another. The poet says a paradise with no changes would just be like a bare land.
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Lastly the poet says that, man lives for the present and is not worried for tomorrow. Similarly, the woman realizes that there are no souls along with her and the tomb of Christ is still fine. The poet describes here that, with no God’s and no beliefs, the world would be like a pandemonium. We would all be alone, if we have the freedom.
Through this poem, Stevens conveys the message that even though paradise is thought to be the most beautiful place, trust and belief in God is above all that and humankind should all understand and think in depth about God and the strength involved when being with GOD.