Sunday Morning Poem- "Embodied the tension between body and spirit"

Stevens tends to use color in a symbolic way, and the "green" of the cockatoo evokes the pleasures of this world. The contrast in the lines from the blink of an eye stanza is between the sunny delights of this world and the shadows and dreams of religious devotion. The central visualize for the entire poem is of a bird, and different birds are mentioned in different parts of the poem. The green cockatoo at the beginning is a symbol of the pleasures of this world, as are the birds mentioned by the woman in the fourth stanza, for she finds her spiritual uplift in the things of this world, in the rush of birds and in their song:

. . . I am content when wakened birds,

Of blurred fields, by their sweet questioning;

But when the birds are gone, and their fond fields

Return no more, where, then, is paradise? (46-50).

The things of this world are value worshiping as well, and this is clear in the second stanza:

The bough of summer and the pass branch,

These are the measures destined for her soul (29-30).

The poem tells a composition in which a sophisticated and intelligent woman is at home on a Sunday morning, and as she lies in the sun she thinks about her beliefs an

The tune of paradise? And shall the earth

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free

Stevens believes our blood volition not fail, and when it does not, what will result is enduring love, "Not this dividing and apathetic blue" (45).

The woman would like to find comforts in the sun, meaning in the warmth of fleshly pursuits rather than in the c superannuateder realm of worship in a church. This evokes an image of old religions, such as sun-worshipping, contrasted with the more staid worship of incumbent religion. Stevens finds a way to compare the old and the new: "Jove in the clouds had his in humanity birth" (31). This contrasts with the birth of Christ, who was born of a human mother and who gum olibanum has experienced the same birth pangs and previous(predicate) life as every human being. This god is thus more of our blood than any of the ancient gods ever were, for the ancients were separate from human beings by having had different and completely supernatural experiences. In later verses, the poet returns to the woman and finds her discovering Christ in nature:

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

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