Good Friday Flashcards
Christ
‘Am I a stone and not a sheep / That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross, To number drop by drop The Blood’s slow loss’
The caesura’s either side of ‘O Christ’ emphasize the need for Jesus, calling out to him - perhaps the narrator needs a closer connection to her faith and calls for help, or her guilt, intensified through her hyperbole in comparing herself to an inanimate object rather than the follower she should be, results in her calling out to help him. The monosyllabic description of his Crucifixion create a slow tone, demonstrating the gruesome punishment that Christ endured - this further emphasizes her guilt, as if Christ suffered for nothing: this idea is rooted in the Christian belief that Jesus sacrificed himself for other people’s sins. ‘Good Friday’ is the day that Jesus is commemorated for his sacrifice, so Rossetti may be calling into question her own faith, or human faith in general, by reminding them of Jesus’ death. In the Victorian era major change took place regarding religion, with science creating doubt in people’s faith. This poem may be a response to Rossetti’s own doubt and the possible subsequent feelings of guilt, or a devotional poem that attempts to renew Society’s faith in religion.
Sun and Moon
‘Not so those women loved’
‘Not so the Sun and Moon / Which hid their faces in a starless sky….- I, only, I.’
Rossetti acknowledges the legitimacy of their emotions as a valuable part of the crucifixion narrative by considering them first in her comparison - in the Victorian period women’s feelings were often considered in a negative light, but Rossetti challenged this concept and suggests women are right to lament, she was after all a strong Christian herself. Rossetti then personifies the seemingly powerful ‘Sun and Moon’ to cower in their fear, the sibilance of a ‘starless sky’ indicating the cruel crucifixion as utterly wrong - this further caused guilt in the people lacking faith, as if nature was traumatized by Jesus’ death, and it is wrong that people feel nothing towards Christianity. The caesura, and end-stop, indicate the narrator’s loneliness, as if conveying the idea that lack of faith in religion results in you being alone.
Moses
‘Greater than Moses, turn and look once more
And smite a rock’
This reference to the Book of Exodus imitates the exhausted and desperate tone of Moses in the Bible, as the speaker pleads with Christ to help her feel again - the imagery of water coming out from the rock, indirectly implied through this Biblical reference, echoes the outpouring of emotion that the narrator longs to feel.
Flock
‘true Shepard of the flock’
Yet there is a clear change in tone as the poem goes along: the predominant rhythm is iambic, causing stress to fall on the ‘s’ sounds, such as ‘stone’, ‘sheep’, and ‘stand’ in the beginning, with the sibilance creating a repetitive and weary tone, as if inquiring questions already asked - yet, in one of the lines in the last stanza, with ‘true Shepard of the flock’, the final plosive sound expresses a change, ending the sibilance, and so ending the questions. This change is also reflected in the rhyme scheme, where the enclosed couples in the ‘abba’ rhyme scheme of the first two stanzas indicates a feeling of entrapment, but the last two stanzas ‘abab’, suggesting movement and progress, as if she has regained her faith in religion.
