In the first stanza of the poem you can tell that the poem is a conversation between children and an older female. “They lisped in accents mild” this line shows that they are talking about children. When children are young they usually slur in their words. “My darling little child?” confirms that the poem is between little children and an older person. It’s safe to say that our Bog is dood can be translated into our God is good. The poem starts off with what seems like the children chanting out God is good. When the older woman asks them to explain why their God is good the children get upset because they believe their faith is being questioned.
In the second stanza the children respond by saying they know that their God is good because that’s what they wish. They kids say they don’t need a reason to believe that their God is good. This shows that these child a blind faith towards their God. The children are very prideful of their God who they blindly follow. They also accuse anyone who doesn’t agree or believe in their God are sinners. “You shall be crucified” the blind faith that these children posses causes these children to turn to violence towards nonbelievers.
In the third stanza the older woman again asks the children what’s so good about your God. She asks them how do you know that your God is good. The children react to her questions by bowing their heads and praying. The children say that they belong to their God and that they belong to their God. At the end of this stanza I felt that the tone of the poem changes. It goes from our God is good to our God is dead.
In the fourth stanza begins with the children raising their heads after being questioned about their faith. The children become upset with each other because they can’t agree on what is good about their God. Each of the children had a different definition for what was good. They all had conflicting views about their faith.
In the fifth stanza the older lady leaves the children after she gets them to question their faith. She left because she didn’t want to see them realizing that they had a false image of God. She felt as if it was better to just walk away and leave the children alone. The last three lines of the poem I believe that the “encroaching sea” is religion in general. People blindly follow God and it gets to a point where they are going to drown in the religion. I believe that the children in the poem follow God because that’s probably the only thing that has been taught to them and when they begin questioning their faith it feels like they don’t have anything else to believe in. The last line in the poem shows that the older woman has not been sucked into religious conformity.
The theme of this poem is about blindly following religion. The poem is basically a conversation between an older woman and a couple of children. The poem begins with the children firmly believing that their God is good, but then when they are asked to give reason why they begin to question themselves. The children aren’t able to agree on a reason why their God is good and this is where the tone in the poem shifts to our God is dead. The older female in this poem makes the children realize that they are blindly following something that they know nothing about.
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