IN THE GARDEN
by Anonymous
In the garden there strayed
A beautiful maid
As fair as the flowers of the morn;
The first hour of her life
She was made a man's wife,
And was buried before she was born.
Do you recognize the allusion? Oh, you want me to define allusion? Okay, an allusion is a reference to a literary work, person, place, or event. Allusion is a means of suggesting far more than it actually says. This picture is a visual allusion to another part of the same story.I ran across my old copy of Sound and Sense: An Introduction to Poetry, Second Edition, by Laurence Perrine, 1963. My notes in the book show that we discussed this poem in my college English class on March 28, 1966.
A brainteaser this early in the morning! I must admit I had no clue except for the picture... reference to Eve?
ReplyDeleteSusan, you are teacher's pet of the day! Yes, the poem alludes to Eve, whose story starts in Genesis 2:
ReplyDelete20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.
21 So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken."
24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.
The whole reason for making the woman was so the man would have a companion, according to this version of the creation story. (The first creation story is in Genesis 1, and it's very different.) And she "died before she was born" because she was never born -- she was "made."
Wow, thanks teach for the rest of the story!
ReplyDelete