An Analysis of Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens“Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens is a poem about a woman who eats a late breakfast and thinks about the purpose of religion. Stevens wants readers to ask themselves the questions posed by the woman and explore their feelings about Christianity. It also wants to raise an awareness of nature. The first stanza asks the first tentative questions before launching into a heated debate in the subsequent stanzas. Stevens uses stanza I to set the scene for the rest of the poem. The first five lines describe that the main character, known simply as "She", skipped church, "to dispel the sacred silence of the ancient sacrifice", and had a late breakfast described as "Coffee and oranges on a sunny chair, / And the green freedom of a cockatoo” (lines 2-6). Line six announces the topic and mood of the poem. “He dreams a little and feels the darkness / of that old catastrophe” ( lines 6-7).She begins to think about the purpose and meaning of the Christian religion.In lines nine to eleven, Stevens shows how the oranges and the cockatoo's wings remind her of a "procession of the dead." moves towards a more serious examination of religion by referring to the “blood and the grave,” the crucifixion (line 15). This discussion leads to the next stanza that questions the Christian tradition. In stanza II, he questions the purpose of going to church and offer his earnings “Why should he give his bounty to the dead” (line 16). Steven poses several unanswered questions in this verse: why give money to the deceased; because God visits only in dreams; and nothing on earth can compare with heaven? In this stanza, S...... center of paper ...... the first three lines are very symbolic of what is to come for all things: In the evening, random flocks of pigeons make ambiguous undulations as they sink. Downward darkness, on spread wings. Darkness in the context of this poem is death. Stevens begins the poem with a woman skipping church and turns it into a discussion about the plausibility of an afterlife, religion, and the existence of souls. Stevens believes we should view nature and our earthly existence as a spiritual basis for measuring our lives. He is also saying that we should spend less time worrying about heaven, the afterlife, and following organized religion. Mostly, it suggests that we should try to find heaven, or beauty, on earth. Works Cited: Stevens, Wallace. "Sunday morning." The Columbia Anthology of American Poetry. Editor: Jay Parini. Columbia University Press, 1995.