"Released by death--to thy
benignant sphere,
And the sad children of
despair and woe
Forget in thee, their cup of sorrow here."
This section in particular especially stood out to me as an example of the imagery she uses. It is as if the children of despair and woe, in this case I almost relate this to Smith because she is speaking to the moon, find solace in the moons "sphere" and can forget their troubles. I also wondered if perhaps this poem was a sort of reassurance to those who suffer from depression that even in the darkness, in this case the moon and tone of the poem, solace can be found in that motif of darkness.
While I'm not sure about the final line interpreting the poem as one about dealing with depression, I enjoyed this reading immensely. But what about taking the reading just a step further? The moon in this poem is definitely personified as a figure of comfort, but what kind of comfort? The comfort found from a mother? The comfort found in a god/gods by those who are trapped in the throes of helplessness and despair? There's definitely a lot more to read into this poem, and I feel like you've only scratched the surface in terms of a deeper meaning to the poem.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad Alex points that out. The comfort that is mentioned may very well be interpreted in a positive light as a sort of haven, but then again the poem reads, "that in thy orb the wretched may have rest." Theses two perspectives are contradicting one another. Could one go on to say that this is more of a satirical poem? The speaker is after all magnifying the moon's greatness by stating the moon brings them peace, but relates the moon to the wicked. In this case, I would also agree the poem might deal with depression. In essence, those who are depressed oftentimes blame themselves and this poem as a whole can be interpreted as a reflection of that.
ReplyDeleteIt is also possible to give this poem a biographical reading: the "sad children of despair and woe" refer at one level to all of the "wretched" of humanity, but on another level Smith is referring to her own children, eleven of which were with her in debtor's prison where she composed Elegiac Sonnets. This double subject is typical of Smith's early sonnets, which often invoke the circumstances of her life, if only in an abstract way. We might also consider what kind of haven Smith's moon provides for the wretched: the poems turns the moon from a physical, astronomical entity in the 1st quatrain, into a figure for inward reflection in the 2nd quatrain, into a "sphere" of forgetting in the 3rd, to the endpoint of her "pilgrimage" on earth. What might we say about this progression?
ReplyDelete