From the beginning of time, religion has been topic that sparked debate, division, and war. At times, to speak one's unique view on religion was to dig one's own grave. Though today's laws protect citizens' religious freedom, many in the United States still hold these rigid beliefs. Many are frightened by any literature that seems to go against the church. "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens seems to fit this bill at first, but such an assumption would be inaccurate. Stevens's "Sunday Morning" does not advocate abandoning religion, but merely raises the question of whether or not an equally or even more greatly satisfying divinity can be attained on Earth.
             Steven's poem explains in detail the near impossibility of valuing good without bad, or life without death. It says we can never truly enjoy the highs of life without also feeling it's lows. One cannot fully appreciate, as the poem says in stanza four, a perfect heaven because it has not "endured As April's green endures." Moreover, it goes on to articulate that heaven is, in fact, undeserving of such beauty. Beauty can only come from death, and thus should only occur from the toil of man and nature as the poem proclaims:
             "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. 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 met...