Sunday Morning Religious Theme

“Alas, that they should wear our colors there,

The silken weavings of our afternoons,

And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!

Death is the mother of beauty…”

In this way, the immaculate perfection of heaven pales in comparison to the full and robust experience of life on Earth.

On the other hand, the poem questions society’s ability to even attain traditional divinity and the closeness to God from the past. y enjoy the highs of life without also feeling it’s lows. He is saying not to take this life for granted, but to relish in each of the small daily pleasures that make this world such a wonderful place. One cannot fully appreciate, as the poem says in stanza four, a perfect heaven because it has not “endured / As April’s green endures. In stanza three, the poem speaks of how the blood of past societies was pure and how it rose and allowed them to see heaven, it then doubtingly asks: “shall our blood fail?” However, in stanza seven, a similar blood metaphor is made, but in this stanza the men are worshipping and dancing in the sun. Instead of doubt, the narrator assuringly says:

“Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,

Out of their blood, returning to the sky;

And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,

The windy lake wherein their lord delights”

Ergo, the peoples’ closeness with the Earth far overshadows the closeness they could hope to feel with an absent god or a distant heaven.

In literature, the narrator is often confused with the author. Not to abandon one’s faith, but also not to toil through each day miserable, thinking of some distant reward. ” Moreover, it goes on to articulate that heaven is, in fact, undeserving of such beauty. A relationship with god does not mean that one may not enjoy a relationship with the Earth to the fullest, and value it equally. It is unknown to most whether the narrator of “Sunday Morning” is representative of Stevens himself, a facet of his beliefs, or simply a thought that crossed his mind. But regardless, the message is clear.