Indeed, it behooves all of these heroes
to ponder the passage of his own soul—
how grievous it must be when death arrives,
disjoining the siblings, once going together,
body and soul!
This poem explores the unique and symbiotic relationship between one’s body and one’s soul. In this quotation, it suggests that death is a treacherous and evil begin, as it cleaves the soul from its house, from the body. The narrator likens the soul and body to siblings; they are inextricably connected, and it is a tragedy when they need to be separated. This quotation, therefore, captures the harrowing reality of death, during which one’s soul is separated from the mortal body to continue existing in the eternal realm.
Think, young man, about the high-power of God, the name of the Redeemer.
That word is unspeakable by any mortal man, nor can man
discover it by oneself upon the mould-way.
The speaker in this poem urges the young man to consider the powerful implications of the ultimate Redeemer—Jesus Christ. He wants the man to consider the fact that Jesus is the one and true Redeemer, the only begin who can grant us the gift of grace and eternal life. The speaker—an older and wiser man—realizes that the young man must come to this understanding on his own; must realize that humans are never worthy of the redemption we’ve been granted. We are also unable to grant ourselves any redemption. It is for this reason that Jesus Christ can ever be the only true Redeemer of man.
It very often seemed to me
that there would be thirty thousand
winters until your death-day.
The narrator of this poem divulges the fact that he took his life and the number of days in it for granted. When he was younger, it seemed that he would live forever; his body and soul were both full of life. Now that he is older, however, he realizes that all life has an expiration date and that his is approaching far quicker than he originally anticipated. This quotation captures the fact that youth instills in us a false sense of immortality. As we age, however, and our souls and bodies age with us, we begin to realize that our flesh—which contains our soul—will fail and falter; we will ultimately succumb to death, during which our bodies will fail and our souls will be granted eternal life.
Surely it was no longer the gallows of vile crime in that place—
yet there they kept close watch,
holy spirits for all humanity across the earth,
and every part of this widely famous creation.
The narrator of this poem is seeking out the original cross upon which Jesus Christ was crucified. He concludes that such a piece of history—constructed of wood and nails—must surely be rotting and devoid of all traces of the atrocity for which it was used. In this quotation, the speaker tries to convince himself that the cross must have been re-claimed by the land and yet still maintained in spirit and importance by those holy spirits who now watch over it. Despite the fact that it surely no longer bears the evidence of the vile crime which was committed upon it, the cross still maintains the holy power that was bestowed upon it by the wicked crime of Christ’s crucifixion.
