Essay Assignment 3

Essay on: My days, my weeks, my months…

From the Southern Harmony no. 98

The poem speaks about time passing and the eventuality of death. It compares the passage of

time with the steady movement of the tides in the sea, from the brevity of days to months, weeks

and years. The voice in the poem surrenders himself to time and accepts the fate to come. He

sees and feels his life slip away, from the swift moments of earthly things to the last groan of

death. The piece, originating as an anonymous lyric in an 19th century hymnal, holds much

character and reflection of earthly woes versus the heavenly promises made in the Christian

faith.

Days, weeks, months and years pass very quickly in our lives. Steadily and increasingly like

the tides of the sea they keep moving and I will accept this for the rest of my life. Death is close,

because moments in our lives move very fast. Even though we like living in this earthly realm,

we will die and move on to a celestial place. My soul will fly from my body and I’ll either go to

heaven and worship God or go to hell and non-existence.

This poem treats death like a constant state that we see happening to others (or a third party)

as it slowly comes and happens to us. We can see this kind of action by watching the order of

themes in the stanzas. In the first, its described as whirling spheres (which we could assume

mean the moon, planets or other moving celestial bodies), like tides whose motions keeps, and

admitting that “I must launch through endless deeps”. All of these verses dealing with constant

movement serve to illustrate that time keeps moving steadily, whether we want it to or not and

that by launching “through endless deeps” the voice in the poem is accepting the natural passage
of endless or infinite time. With imagery of death and birth, contrasted with one another, the

second stanza further treats the flow of time, but this time adding another quality: the speed or

brevity of it, “how swift moments pass between”. Finally, accepting the call of death and

preparing to soar to the heavens “And thou must take thy flight beyond the vast expansive blue”,

the third stanza shows the acceptance of death and the believe of either moving on to heaven or

nonexistence.

It’s interesting to note the characteristic use of Victorian imagery that influenced 19th century

poetry. With colorful and alluding passages that metaphorize time as whirling spheres and

compares it to the ocean tides. The piece in its entirety is supported or delivered through the use

of one kind of imagery after the another. “The grave is near, the cradle seen, how swift the

moments pass between”, the first verses of the second stanza, shows us a shocking image that

deals with both birth, death and how moments quickly pass between one and the other. The last

stanza, where we can see that the author already accepted his fate, takes a longer deeper image.

From his soul that “attend a solemn call”, to “thou must take thy flight beyond the vast expansive

blue” represent a very florid and picturesque landscape of scenes of a departed soul. After this

the soul flies to either “sing above as angels do” or “sink in endless night”.

This hymn found in the Southern Harmony hymnal is one of a kind. Not because of its

origin, it’s one of many that aren’t as popular as others, but because of its vague religious theme

in an otherwise Christian hymnal book. This hymn treats death like an unassailable fact of life,

unescapable and relentless, but as “solemn call” that gives us “flight” to sing like angels or sink

in endless night. Curiously, this poem never praises God nor mentions any religious imagery

common in many others around it. Aside from the singing angels, and the mention of a soul, we

could assume that this is a very secular hymn. Instead of calling people to have faith in God and
to be good in order to gain the blessing of eternal life, it merely accepts death as a reality and

expresses the necessity to fly either to heaven or nonexistence.