Pop Stevens, I am---well---appalled
to find some of this poem's words are
blasphemous toward the Morning Star.
What else could it really be called?
I am glad you found repentence,
even though on your death's bed:
dying in Christ, and not the dread
horror of damnation's sentence.
Starward
[jlc]
Author's Notes/Comments:
I prefer Stevens' work from the volume, Parts of a World, forward; his earlier work does not really reach me, and I do not read much of it (with a few excellent exceptions). I had not read the poem cited in the title for probably some two decades. Re-reading it today, I found it very blasphemous toward Christ. They tell me that most scholars now accept the accounts (still disputed by a few) that he received Christian baptism on his deathbed and lived for a few days in the peace of Christ before being called to Heaven.
