"A Lesson for this Sunday" is a poem which sets the scene for a perfect day which observes two innocent children maiming a harmless butterfly and asks us to draw a conclusion between good and evil.
"On a Favourite Cat, drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes" is a poem about another type of good and evil with the difference that, the evil character is not innocent but, tainted and is intended to be detrimental. .
"This Be The Verse" is a poem about hereditary sin which is passed down and will continue to be passed down because it is irrepressible. .
All three poems are about different things. However, they all have one thing in common which is that the poets project the origin of sin in the message of each poem. .
They do this using various means such as language, the way the poem is laid out and even the way they use rhyming schemes and punctuation.
Language.
The language in "A Lesson for this Sunday" is mostly very simple although, it does contain some words which are not widely used and some that are very complicated such as, scythe, teetering, eviscerate and lepidopterists. The poet also uses religious words such as Sabbath and protestant hosanna which gives the impression of a religious day and yet uses the children to launch the idea of the loss of innocence and force us to think about sin and the balance of good and evil. .
This language is extremely different to the other two poems" language, of which I will also analyse. In the poem "On a Favourite Cat, drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes", the language is quite cryptic since you have to work out what each line means in relation to the poem. For example, the line that reads "Still had she gazed; but "midst the tide, Two angel forms were seen to glide" could be translated to give the meaning of purity, innocence and perhaps even a greater power. The reader must give much thought to the message that the poet is trying to get across in order to fully understand the poem's significance.
