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T. S. Eliot

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Student Question

Analyze each stanza of T.S. Eliot's "Sunday Morning Service."

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The full title of the poem is "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service." It was first published in 1920. Although at eight stanzas and thirty-six lines it's a relatively brief poem, it is an incredibly esoteric one and does not lend itself to easy interpretation. Although I'll cover some of the stanzas, a full analysis would require many pages. I'd advise looking at the website below, as well as looking at Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue's annotated texts of Eliot's poems.

The two major lines of thought to trace throughout the poem are religion (or spirituality) and sexual functions, especially related to procreation. As with so many Eliot poems, it is densely packed with allusions, including ones to the Bible, Italian Renaissance painters, church fathers, and his own poems. In stanza three, he mentions "the Umbrian school," which was a group of Italian artists, and the stanza goes on to discuss...

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a painting of "the Baptized God," which refers to Christ.

In the next stanza, he brings God the Father and the Holy Spirit ("Paraclete") into the conversation. The trinity is one of the great mysteries of Christian theology, so Eliot is wading into very deep waters, as is the reader. As the poem progresses, Eliot brings in more religious characters ("the sable presbyters"), and takes a brief detour into nature (bees, flowers), before ending up in the final stanza with the character of Sweeney, who appears in two other Eliot poems, "Sweeney Erect" and "Sweeney Among the Nightingales," both of which should be read in relation to this poem. In the opening line of the latter, Sweeney is described as "Apeneck," which contrasts with the spiritual and theological themes of the "Sermon."

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