Sigourney’s poem Trust in God talks about how we should put our trust in God because men are so much more harsh than Him. Sigourney presents the reader the bible text 2 Samuel 24:14 in which David is asked in verse thirteen to chose from seven years of famine in his country, three months of escaping from his enemy or three days of a plague in his country. In verse fourteen David asks for the plague because he rather be in the “hand of the Lord” than in the hands of man. Here David says God is merciful but men are not and in the end, God has mercy on David and free his people of the plague. This is Sigourney is trying to convey in her poem. She says, “Man hath a voice severe, his neighbour’s fault to blame, a wakeful eye, a listening ear to note his brother’s shame” (38). …show more content…
Men are always looking for something to blame and shame his neighbor for and that is a mistake. She goes on and says, “ He, with suspicious glance the curtain’d breast doth read, and raise the accusing balance high, to weight the doubtful deed” (38). Men are always mistrustful and ready to accuse. Men are quick to judge even when they don’t know what is happening, aside from the situation being suspicious. Sigourney states, “Oh Thou, whose piercing thought doth note each secret path, for mercy to Thy throne, we fly, From man’s condemning wrath” (38). She addresses God and acknowledges that he knows every secret and all thoughts with his “piercing thought” and so he would be able to have mercy. In the other hand, she says we run from “man’s condemning wrath”, meaning men cannot see beyond their hate and desire to punish. She then makes a reference to the bible story of David again. She mentions the angel that God sent to spread the plague. She narrates, “Thou, who dost dimness mark in heaven’s resplendent
And in this time she saw, as she thought, devils open their mouths, all inflamed with burning flames of fire as if they should have swallowed her in, sometimes menacing her, sometimes threatening her, sometimes pulling and hailing her both night and day during the foresaid time” (Kempe 7).
She tries to debate her subject and brings a sense to help her credibility as an authority by saying Jesus is not support death punishment. As times has indeed changed, “The “wicked” might be “coerced by the sword” to “protect the innocent,”…even punishment by death” states by
In the second stanza, the woman is talking about her pain and loss. In "I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children," she is haunted by her own children's faint cries that she hears in her mind. She then makes the transition from telling the reader to explaining to her children why she did what she did. It feels as though she can't control her emotions and finally breaks down. She forgets about the reader and focuses on her children. She is asking for some understanding when she says, "Believe that in my deliberateness I was not deliberate. . . . Though why should I whine," she asks, "Whine that the crime was other than mine."
The story begins with a dark tone as she address how her audience feels about her actions.
She begins to speak directly to the reader, getting them to realize that even though they have read her thoughts, they do not quite understand them. She tells the reader they are
...fair haired son, my shame, my pride” We are told she has a son, and that not only is it a memory of her shame but he is her pride. He’s all she has. Then the last three lines on stanza six are switched. The narrator is now talking to her son, her pride. “Your father would give lands for one” she is telling her son that if his father really wanted to, he would take him and would leave her (the narrator) with nothing.
As she does this she makes some new realizations regarding the situations outcome in the grand scheme of life. Throughout the entire poem, Harper begins multiple stanzas with some variation of the phrase “Can you blame me that…”. In each of these lines, the speaker is posing the question of whose fault the scandal was to an unknown audience. However, in the eight stanzas that begin with the variations of this question, the speaker only questions the man’s role in the situation once. Her repetition of the word ‘me’ in these stanzas indicates that she was immediately
The quote supports her tone by expressing what she seems to believe we as one should
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
"You see, for her words were medicine; they were magic and invisible. They came from nothing into sound and meaning. They were beyond price; they could neither be bought nor sold. And she never threw words away." --Pg. 85
She says, “To mourn over the miseries of others, the poverty of the poor, their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums, the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all this would be mere sentimentalizing.” This reflects the personality of women to be very kind, but also shows that men don’t show the mercy or affection needed in some areas. She also showed this in the quote from the first paragraph, “...while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead alike to love and hope!” She implied that men aren’t showing the love they must show in order to have peace, therefore bringing destruction. She then reminded us that mother nature is trying to repair all of the destruction in the world. She used the term “mother nature” because it causes the audience to connect the earth with the gender of the woman and how they are kind is
Toward the end of this poem, she compares her husband to a guest rather than a member of the household. "The welcome house of him my dearest guest." (p. 121) The final comparison of her husband is when she defines each of their own individualities as one whole. "Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone, I here, thou there, yet both but one."
The second stanza begins with a series of rhetorical questions that express the woman's inner struggle. The second question is her response to the dark encroachment of the procession, and the third question answers the previous two. The randomness of this questioning illustrates the disorganized nature of her thinking, and an answer finally surfaces when she decides that "divinity must live within herself." A list of positive and negative emotions that she has experienced as a result of nature provides further explanation of the divinity she hopes she possesses within. The realization that these emotions "are the measures destined for her soul" ends the stanza with a feeling of hopefulness.
The conflict continues in the next passage, “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away...
She opens with a general curse on the king, directed towards the heavens. Her choice to look upwards, and cast her curses towards the heavens leads to a sense that she is addressing higher beings, and more importantly, she is addressing heavenly beings, not witches or the underworld or dark sources. Perhaps her address to the heavens implies that she possesses the ability to bring