Comments on Sunday Morning

I like quite a few of the points this poem makes. Divinity should be within us, not an external oppressive force. It can be captured in certain moments, often representing a deep connection with the natural world. Things such as wet roads on Autumn nights, but also in sadder emotions, which is an interesting point. The poem also reinforces the common criticism of the conventional view of heaven, where everything is perfect and no-one ever dies. If nothing ever changes, things are bound to be uninteresting and significantly less beautiful than earth. Death is the mother of beauty, the poem says. If the trees displayed their Autumn colors all year round, would we find the colors as beautiful? I would not. It would be symptomatic of a deep wrongness (to co-opt a usage from Stranger in a Strange Land). The trees go through their cycles each year and this is part of the beauty. If they were to retain their almost-dead leaves for the mere purpose of being visually pleasing to some humans, they would lose their deeper beauty. The beauty expressed in their intricate interplay with the rest of nature. I like the passage on the primitve religion. The poem seems to be saying, here is a more honest, more basic religion. These chanting men
feel a deep connection with nature: the sun, the wind, the lake. And when they die, they know they will rejoin the earth, they will rejoin nature, and that is indeed a mystical, spiritual thing.