Summary
The poet says Dürer would have liked this town. It has eight beached whales to look at, sweet sea air, and waves that are precise and formal. The seagulls soar over the clock and around the lighthouse without seeming to move their wings, only moving up and down with a slight quiver. They mew near the sea that, unlike a normal sea, is purple-turned-green like a peacock’s neck, just as Dürer painted the Tyrol in peacock blue and guinea gray instead of green.
There is a twenty-five pound lobster and fish nets drying. A storm comes and bends the grass and upsets the stars both in the sky and on the steeple; the poet says it is “a privilege to see / so much confusion.”
The flowers and trees are covered with fog so they appear like a tropical forest. All manner of flowers are here, including snapdragons, foxglove, salpiglossis, and morning glories. There are also cattails and flags, lichens, sunflowers, daisies, petunias, poppies, and black sweet peas. The climate is not right for exotic plants and serpents; rather, cats get rid of the rats instead of cobras. There are little newts with white dots on black stripes, but they are shy.
Ambition has little purchase in the town. Ambrose, a college student, sits on a hill with his “not-native books” and sees the boats on the rigid sea. He knows the town very well, and has a refined sense of elegance, rooted in appreciation of things rather than arrogance.
On the church spire a man in red lets down a rope. He is C.J. Poole, the steeple-jack, but may be “part of a novel” as well. He puts up a sign that says “Danger” by the church. The church has four stone whitewashed columns. It seems to be a good place for “waifs, children, animals, prisoners, / and presidents” who care not for the “sin-driven senators.” The town also has other buildings and is home for the hero, the student, and the steeple-jack in their own way.
It seems impossible for a town like this to be dangerous. The people are simple and the steeple-jack puts up a sign warning of danger as he gilds the steeple’s star, which stands for hope.
Analysis
“The Steeple-Jack,” like Moore's “A Grave,” contrasts a bird’s-eye perspective with close-up, minute observation. It begins with the voice of the poet who seems to be talking to the reader. She presents a picture of a charming New England seaside town. Everything is orderly and neat, from the “formal” waves to the “arranged” fishnets. There is also abundance, seen in the “twenty-five pound lobster” and stunning arrangements of colorful flowers. There are wheeling seagulls and a lighthouse, sweet sea air and eight amazing beached whales. This is a town to love, as Ambrose the student ardently does.
The peace and placidity are suddenly interrupted by a storm, however, which “disturbs the stars in the sky and the / star on the steeple.” The poet is amused by the confusion but does not dwell on it for long, moving into a discussion of the different types of flora in the town. She mentions an out-of-towner, Ambrose, and how he watches the boats in his adopted town’s harbor. At the same time in a slightly more disturbing scene, C.J. Poole, a man with a quotidian name and job but a striking shade of attire (“scarlet”) drops a rope down the steeple. Moore makes him seem a bit unreal, commenting “he might be part of a novel,” but he carries out the real task of setting out a “Danger” sign as he works on gilding the star. The star on the church steeple is the last major image of the work, as it “stands for hope,” but it is on a church that is disconcertingly hollow and would be a fitting place for loners and exiles. In conclusion, the poet says that this town certainly isn't dangerous, but the lines about the star being gilded leave the reader with a few doubts as to its true character.
In short, Moore begins by taking the viewer from that bird’s-eye perspective in which the viewer sees the town without any flaws, merely as a serene and lovely picturesque postcard, to the detailed look which brings with it thought-provoking observations. The waves that appear in the mind’s eye like something out of a Charles Burchfield work are replaced by quotidian buildings like a post office and henhouse. The sentimental view has been replaced by a realistic one, and as scholar A.K. Weatherford writes, the “Danger” sign is not just a warning of physical danger but of “sentimentally concluding that the town is merely the picturesque place that has been presented in the images purveyed through the vision of the steeple-jack” that characterized the first part of the poem.
The characters Moore chooses are either outsiders or perched high above the town, and the people that would populate one of its buildings are a motley ensemble—”waifs, children, animals, prisoners, / and presidents.” The fact that Moore says the church would be a haven for them (as it would be loved by Albrecht Dürer) makes it clear that it’s not actually where they live, but that it could be in a reality just slightly removed from this one. This is what her poetry allows for, as scholar Beverly Coyle says: “Poetry is a ‘place’ where one can travel, at least in the mind and soul, far beyond the ambitions and one-dimensional concerns of politics and business.” Moore creates a “studious, meditative elegance achieved by disinterested love.” However, as scholar Guy Rotella writes, “Moore’s poem praises art and also exposes the threat that art will carry its proclivity for order too far.” Like Dürer and his woodcuts, Moore enjoyed rigidity, clarity, and precision, but viewing or creating things in that fashion can lead to an elision of the ambiguous, elusive aspects of reality. Even her syllabic composition, which is unique and highly modern, creates a mood of remove from the poem and calls attention to the poem itself as a piece of art.
The steeple-jack himself is one of the stranger elements of the poem, for his scarlet clothing and the way he “lets / down a rope as a spider spins a thread” give him a devilish aspect. Harold Bloom says the steeple-jack “suddenly seems evil, as if he were setting a trap for a potential victim” and that it is similar to other texts of American history and literature, such as Jonathan Edward’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” with its image of sinners-as-spiders hanging above the flames of hell, and the scarlet letter of Hawthorne.
There is irony in the “Danger” sign being placed by the church, perhaps calling attention to the fact that churches often have a facade of piety but are no different than the “sin-driven // senators.” The church is problematic, for its “whitewashed columns suggest both modesty and whited sepulchre,” Rotella notes. The star atop the church is “gilded,” meaning it is not really gold but is only painted that way; it is a sign, not substance. It only “stands for hope,” but cannot do anything to truly change anything. Sooner or later the beached whales will start to decay and poison the “sweet sea air,” as the church can poison society.
Ultimately, the reference of the “Danger” sign is ambiguous. Is it to the church itself? Or to what the steeple-jack is physically doing with the star on the spire, which is in a “not true” pitch? Or to the assumption that small towns like this are impervious to sin or chaos? The wonderful thing about Moore is that it is perhaps all three, or even none; her delightfully abstruse yet mesmerizingly precise poems yield a plethora of potential and possibilities.
