The most capturing part of each stanza in "A Forsaken Garden" were the last lines of each stanza. There is a little bit of meter variation elsewhere in the poem, but the form does not change at all for those last lines. I think they sound unnatural, perhaps because it is three syllables and that seems unresolved to me. Considering the end rhyme for those lines comes relatively quicker than anywhere else in the poems I think it's intentional on Swinburn's part. I would argue "this lies dead" becoming "death lies dead" means Swinburne acknowledges death and life as equals and his incredibly decorated detailing of the forsaken garden is to beautify something seen unconventionally so.
Because of the allegorical nature of Shelley's poem and that this poem is called "A Forsaken Garden" I see this poem almost as an allegory for the messianic redemption via death in the New Testament. God promises to rectify man, despite Adam and Eve forsaking God by giving into temptation. However, this rectification can only come through sacrifice and death.
Because of the allegorical nature of Shelley's poem and that this poem is called "A Forsaken Garden" I see this poem almost as an allegory for the messianic redemption via death in the New Testament. God promises to rectify man, despite Adam and Eve forsaking God by giving into temptation. However, this rectification can only come through sacrifice and death.
I think this interpretation makes a lot of sense. I agree that the short last lines lent themselves to a sense of unease. I especially think the poems dissonance suggests a discomforting resolution which ties in nicely with your reading of the poem. I would be interested to see how this reading interacts with a more ecologically driven reading.
ReplyDeleteThe poem does make a religious statement, but I feel that it is from a pantheist belief rather than Christian. Pantheism is the belief that "the Universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God" (Wikipedia). If the wind and the sea - Nature - of Swinburne's "A Forsaken Garden" are "God," this reconciles the areas of the poem which disrupt the Christian allegory since, in this reading, they are flatly NOT Christian. It also explains why death is dead, and places death in an interesting position of being outside of and dwarfed by Nature. Nature is eternal, even in its endless state of change and apparent decay; the sea simply swallows the "crumbl[ing]" (73)land, thus destroying death's handiwork (see the final stanza). Love, similarly, is explained to be nothing more than a human construct and not an element of "God." The Lovers imagine their love to be eternal, but it is as evanescent as the sea foam, and like the roses, is folded into the earth with the bodies of those who bore it.
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