An anthology of poems based on declining faith in christian religion
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Course
English Literature (Q320)
Institution
University Of Brighton (UoB)
This anthology is an exploration through poetry the idea of intensely strong faith and how the realities of life, and the mortality of that life shakes that faith. Though this idea is applicable to most if not all religion types, the poems in this anthology are specifically focused towards the typi...
Losing my religion:
An anthology of poems exploring how unshakeable faith becomes
shakeable when exposed to modern life
1
,Contents:
Critical Introduction P.3-8.
My God! O let me call thee mine – Anne Brontë P.9.
On Another’s sorrow- William Blake P.10-11.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud- William Wordsworth P.12.
Lucy Gray- William Wordsworth P.13-15.
From the Lady of the Lake, Flowers and Trees- Sir Walter Scott P.16.
If- Rudyard Kipling P.17-18.
The Conqueror Worm- Edgar Allan Poe P.19-20.
Nothing Gold Can Stay- Robert Frost P.21.
God, A Poem- James Fenton P.22-23.
Sonny’s Lettah- Linton Kwesi Johnson P.24-27.
Bibliography P.28.
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, This anthology is an exploration into intense faith using poetry to expose the realities of life, and
how the mortality of that life shakes that faith. Though this idea is applicable to most if not all
religion types, the poems in this anthology are focused on the typical Christian God. The anthology is
in a specific order to express the hypocrisy found in old Christian teachings and the journey a
modern day believer might make in discovering those hypocrisies and losing their faith in protest of
them.
It begins with the most overt display of faith in My god! O let me call thee mine by Anne Brontë. This
poem is crying out to God and asking to be by His side. Despite the speaker declaring themselves a
sinner and that they “cannot say their faith is strong”, 1 they offer all that is left to them in devotion
to God. It possesses the unshakeable belief that Anne was known for; the Brontë sisters were raised
by a pastor father and Anne was always the most religious out of them, with her poems often
expressing her love for Christ, including My God! O let me call thee mine. “She believed in the
universal redemption of mankind; that ultimately all people, whatever their faith or actions in this
life, would be redeemed by Christ.”2 It is first in the anthology to exhibit how intense faith can be for
a person: there is a desperate tone throughout to display how deeply the speaker wants to be close
to God.
It is followed by On Another’s Sorrow by William Blake, which has very similar themes to My god! O
let me call thee mine in that it also has an inordinate amount of faith in God. On Another’s Sorrow
focuses on the omnipresent side of God. It stipulates that God is always here and feels the pain
others experience. Blake uses imagery of a father’s pain for their child to represent God feeling that
same pain for all His children who are suffering. A series of rhetorical questions is used to ask
1
Anne Brontë, ‘My God! O let me call thee mine’, Songs of the Soul: gathered out of many lands and ages,
(New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1880) p.276, 9.
2
John Waddington-Feather, ‘Religiosity in the Poetry of the Brontë Sisters’ The Journal of the Brontë Society,
38: 3, (2013)
3
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