Saint Francis and the Sow | Themes
Innocence and Guilt
The “bud” may stand “for all things” in this poem, but one of its most common associations is with “innocence.” A bud is a flower in its infancy, both vulnerable to the elements and powerful in its potential beauty. Like any infant being, it is unblemished, whole, and pure in its emergent form. Seventeenth-century poet Thomas Traherne exalted the delights of infancy and childhood throughout his work, and expressed innocence in images of light:
No darkness then did overshade, But all within was pure and bright; No guilt did...
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