I'm not really reading this poem (which I'd never read before) as you do. In particular I don't see "the truth of the gospel and the goodness of God taken for granted." I see both as a sort of fatalistic Ecclesiastes view: this is the way it's always been and always will be, pastoral calm sometimes, war sometimes, and a probably indifferent cosmos. And pretty much the same mood throughout.
I wondered if maybe there's something you know about him personally that made you attribute active Christian belief to him. I looked at his Wikipedia bio but didn't see religion mentioned one way or the other.
By "both" in my comment I meant the octet and sestet. In case that wasn't clear.
I'm not sure I would attribute active Christian belief to the poet (and I don't know offhand what kind of relationship he would have had with Christian faith). The poem itself seems cynical about the goodness of God, rather than otherwise --- as I think about it more, the shift that happens does seem to me to be a shift to a new way of seeing the cycles of the millennia, not as cycles of peace and whatever those "last-first-first-last" birds mean, but as cycles of war. The stone-deaf, stone-blind God has the last say in the poem, not the birds, as if whatever settled assumptions they suggest are obliterated, like the fields themselves, by warfare.
I like your invocation, in your previous comment, of Ecclesiastes --- that seems on the money.
What does seem clearer to me, and what I wish I had made clear in my intro, is the way the two visions interlock and interchange, as parallel visions of time in its repetitions (the second vision as static as the first).
I should mention, by the way, that I read the poem first, then your commentary. So that was my unguided reaction--I didn't start out with "let's see if I agree with her or not." :-) Someone at my blog suggested doing it in that order, and I found that I do prefer it, especially when I don't already know the poem, which has been the case with the majority of these, I think.
That seems like a good approach --- to form your own impression of the poem first. And believe me, I have no attachment to being agreed with! I'm as apt as the next person to miss things, or not to think them through as thoroughly as I might. Your insights here have made me return to the poem and think more carefully about how it all hangs together.
I'm not really reading this poem (which I'd never read before) as you do. In particular I don't see "the truth of the gospel and the goodness of God taken for granted." I see both as a sort of fatalistic Ecclesiastes view: this is the way it's always been and always will be, pastoral calm sometimes, war sometimes, and a probably indifferent cosmos. And pretty much the same mood throughout.
I think you're probably right here.
I wondered if maybe there's something you know about him personally that made you attribute active Christian belief to him. I looked at his Wikipedia bio but didn't see religion mentioned one way or the other.
By "both" in my comment I meant the octet and sestet. In case that wasn't clear.
I'm not sure I would attribute active Christian belief to the poet (and I don't know offhand what kind of relationship he would have had with Christian faith). The poem itself seems cynical about the goodness of God, rather than otherwise --- as I think about it more, the shift that happens does seem to me to be a shift to a new way of seeing the cycles of the millennia, not as cycles of peace and whatever those "last-first-first-last" birds mean, but as cycles of war. The stone-deaf, stone-blind God has the last say in the poem, not the birds, as if whatever settled assumptions they suggest are obliterated, like the fields themselves, by warfare.
I like your invocation, in your previous comment, of Ecclesiastes --- that seems on the money.
What does seem clearer to me, and what I wish I had made clear in my intro, is the way the two visions interlock and interchange, as parallel visions of time in its repetitions (the second vision as static as the first).
I should mention, by the way, that I read the poem first, then your commentary. So that was my unguided reaction--I didn't start out with "let's see if I agree with her or not." :-) Someone at my blog suggested doing it in that order, and I found that I do prefer it, especially when I don't already know the poem, which has been the case with the majority of these, I think.
That seems like a good approach --- to form your own impression of the poem first. And believe me, I have no attachment to being agreed with! I'm as apt as the next person to miss things, or not to think them through as thoroughly as I might. Your insights here have made me return to the poem and think more carefully about how it all hangs together.