I really enjoyed working through and analyzing this poem. To The Moon, is a combination of an
elegy and a sonnet written in the Shakespearian style—this juxtaposition is
rather interesting since an elegy (from my understanding) is a reflection on
death and the sonnet is typically associated with love.
The sonnet starts off with the speaker standing in the moonlight
watching the moons reflection ripple in the stream and addresses the “Queen of
the silver bow!” (1). To me, this immediately evoked Artemis, the Greek goddess
of the hunt who also represents childbirth and the moon. The first 6 lines of
the sonnet are very calm and whimsical painting this picture of a beautiful
night scene. Reading the first couple of lines, it seems like this poem could
end happily, but then it begins to shift to despair and sorrow:
“And while I gaze, thy mild and placid light
Sheds a soft calm upon my troubled breast;
And oft I think—fair planet of the night,
That in thy orb, the wretched may have rest:
The sufferers of the earth perhaps may go,
Released by death—to thy benignant sphere,
And the sad children of despair and woe
Forget in thee, their cup of sorrow here.” (5-12)
In the light of the moon, the speaker is freed from her troubles (6) and
believes that even “the wretched may have rest,” (8). As we can see by the
semicolon at the end of this line, this thought is continued into line 9 where
we find out that the “wretched” are the “sufferers of the earth,” (9) which I
believe is humanity as a whole. The sonnet continues with and image of death
and this other “sphere”:
“Released by death—to thy
benignant sphere,
And the sad children of despair and woe
Forget in thee, their cup of sorrow here.” ( 10-12)
These three lines are interesting to me for a couple of different
reasons. First, line 10 seems to be describing something heaven like. I do not
know if it is meant to be “heaven” but it definitely infers something along
those lines. Any thoughts on this?
Also, her use of children in
line 11 is interesting. When read together previous two lines, children can simply be all humans, but
I also believe that she may be referring to her own children here. Knowing a little bit about Smiths’
background—her being in debtors prison with her husband, where the Elegiac Sonnets were written, and having
to leave her 12 children behind, this seems fitting to me. We could take it to mean her children who are
suffering from the despair and woe of their familys situation in life.
I believe that agency in this poem is given to “death”, “despair” and
“woe” by personifying them and giving them human characteristics. Death is the only way to be free from the hardships
of this world.
Finally, the sonnet ends with the speaker almost longing for death so as
to be freed from this world filled with struggle and sorrow.
Questions:
-I would like to discuss more lines 9-12. What is this “sphere” she is
talking about? Is it heaven?
-Why the moon? What is the significance of this?
-Is there anything to be said about her deciding to combine the elegy and sonnet together?
-What is the context of "children" in line 11?
Your questions about the “benignant sphere” and the context of “children” suggest a biographical reading of the poem that Smith encouraged with her many prefaces to the successive editions of the sonnets. The “sufferers of the earth” in line 9 suggests humanity generally, but line 11 insinuates that these sufferers may also be Smith’s actual children, several of whom were with her in debtor’s prison when she wrote these early poems (Sonnet IV was published in 1784). This reading is reinforced by the reference to Artemis/Diana (or perhaps Selene) in line 1. The final lines seem more like a plea than a mediation on suicide, and the former reading corresponds with Smith’s other sonnets from this period. The poem’s turn in line 13 (marked end stop in line 12 and succeeding couplet) suggests that Smith remains in the “toiling scene” (14), a phrase often read as referring to the toil of writing sonnets for money. The poem is also interesting for the relationships it develops between the speaker and the moon: the speaker begins with an apostrophe (or direct address) to the moon as an object whose shadow she watches. The next quatrain comments on the “calming” influence of the moon, which in turn generates an abstract reflection on the human condition. This reflection is complicated, however, when the speaker figures the moon as a specific location, a “sphere,” where people can “go” (9-10). This series of changes in the moon’s status (from object, to influence, to place) in each quatrain allow Smith’s conclusion: her time “in this toiling scene” has been a “pilgrimage” to reach “thy world serene” (13-14). This passage employs a conventional theological idea of heaven as a reward for earthly suffering, another common aspect of Smith’s early sonnets. In general, the early sonnets often turn physical objects into ideas in order to promote the reader’s empathetic response to Smith, the lyric speaker of the poems.
ReplyDelete