The lilacs in the sunshine lift
Their plumes of dear old-fashioned flowers
Whose fragrance fills the silent house
Where, left alone, I count the hours.
High in the apple-trees the bees
Are humming, busy in the sun;
An idle robin cries for rain
But once or twice, and then is done.
The Sunday morning stillness holds
In heavy slumber all the street,
While from the church just out of sight
Behind the elms, comes slow and sweet
The organ's drone, the voices faint
That sing the quaint long-metre hymn—
I somehow feel as if shut out
From some mysterious temple, dim
And beautiful with blue and red
And golden lights from windows high,
Where angels in the shadows stand,
And earth seems very near the sky.
The day-dream fades, and so I try
Again to catch the tune that brings
No thought of temple or of priest,
But only of a voice that sings.
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Comments
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one of my absolute favorites
I can't remember when or where I first came across this poem, but it has been at least five years and I still find it one of the loveliest and the most meaningful to me. I realize that the 'meaning' of poetry is extremely subjective (and hold fast to that an amateur personal emotional reaction is just as valid, even with poems that have "official" academic interpretations that are held in consensus by professional poets/scholars/professors. T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" and William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" are the two examples of very often analyzed poems that spring to mind).
What I love about this poem and the idea that it clearly invokes in me does have to do with spirituality and the quest for finding that feeling of spirituality that comes from pondering the interconnectedness of humankind, nature and the universe. The "oceanic" feeling, I think it's called.
Jewett titles the poem, "At home from church," but the specifics of *why* she stayed home aren't expressed. She may be sick, she may not have wanted to go, she may not have been invited. She doesn't seem sad or upset about it, and is enjoying the beauty of a warm spring morning. However, she does use the terms "left alone", "count the hours", "somehow feel shutout", which do speak to a certain sense of isolation. Then, in the last stanza, after all the beautiful imagery about nature and also the beautiful imagery about worshipping at a church, she uses the lines "No thought of temple or of priest/But only of a voice that sings". In the context that this is a Victorian woman writing about something that could be construed as going against convention (enjoying staying home from church and saying so, and also finding personal spirituality in the observation of nature) she's eloquently expressing the idea that such spirituality may exsist to an individual *outside* of the structured religion, without the 'help' of The Church, a Judeo-Christian God or a Priest.
So, is that "reading too much into it"? I have no idea. That, too, is subjective. I do know that this poem grabbed me as soon as I read it, and has stayed in my memory for years, and speaks to me very clearly about finding spirituality in many experiences, not just the ones we think of as the most common or are currently accepted in mainstream America.
Even without all the interpretation, the meter, the rhyme and the description of the scene are written with such skill that the piece stands on that merit alone...i.e., even if you don't want to read the lyrics, the melody is just lovely.
Thoughts? -
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She's At Church
She's in the middle of a day dream while she should be singing the hymn. She's wishing she could be home on the nice spring day but realizes everyone is at church and it would be lonely, so she drifts back to the church from her home in a kind of out of body dreamstate, where the stain glass windows (blue and red) signal that she is inside the church and has to re-focus on the preacher and her place in the song. This of course is a christian analogy which is so simple, even if you drift away from god you can always return to him and remain in favor, when the robin cries for rain but once or twice and then is done is her way of relaying how god will gently remind you of this.
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I know that there's a meaning to this poem, but, I cannot figure it out. It is a beautiful poem, and I absolutely love the respect for nature, respect for god. . . the spirituality and romanticism. . . but I can't figure out the meaning.
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This is a very romanticist poem -- very back to nature. I absolutely love the descriptions -- they're all so beautiful.
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