Topic: Religion

Last updated: August 19, 2019

In the poem Footsteps of Angels by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow divinity is a part in Footsteps of Angels, as the title suggests,Longfellow likes to take the simple approach to poetry and still make it meaningful.

Longfellow starts Footsteps of Angels by depicting the setting in the home of a man, as it becomes night. Longfellow capitalizes the words “Day” and “Night” , as though to show them as being rather important and that they have leverage over the soul of the person speaking. Longfellow chose his words very carefully to show that the speaker seems to think he is a better person during the night, the Night wakes the “better” soul.

He is alone at night and perhaps that’s why he feels he is a better person. The references to the spirit are not religious aspects, because the evening is portrayed to be heavenly time too. The second stanza takes a different route, the holiness of nighttime. This stanza is here as a contrast from the first stanza by describing a setting that would normally be creepy. The lighting is the little flames from lamps, which offer little light and enhances the shadows.

This could be the start of a poem about a spooky house or about depression, but it takes after a stanza about feeling peaceful and holy in the night. The shadows, despite the fact that they are “like phantoms,” are not unsettling, because of the mood set from the last stanza. The following two stanzas the holiness of the setting is more evident, and the third stanza moves on from the shadows and phantoms from the other one. It seems like Longfellow want to continue with the eerie feel, but the dead people seem to be loved ones of the narrator of the poem, who does not seem surprised this is happening as if it had happened before. He had recognized a figure in the doorway, and said he was young, strong, noble, and dead.

Suggesting respects hardships and he had had some too. This could also show the reader that the narrator is most likely lonely, and lost a lot of people close to them.The fifth stanza essentially is saying that the phantoms are holy ghosts, who suffered in their lives, and past away without acknowledgment. Longfellow uses romanized language, “the holy ones,” “cross of suffering,” and “us on earth” to make the text seem older. One way Longfellow use this language is through the phrase Being Beauteous (“beautiful being”), who the narrator remembers as a good influence on him in his childhood. The Being Beauteous strolls quietly through the home of the speaker, and she is portrayed as being “saint-like.

” The first line of the sixth stanza is expressing the joyous feel that follows this spirit. She does not address the other spirits, they “softly rebuke,” as though this is a way of cleansing themselves, it fits because the spirit represents holiness in a way. The narrator hears their rebuke and the spirits discover their depression lifts, and they are inspired by the presence of the Being Beauteous.Footsteps of Angels is a poem about the narrator who sees the people from his past and finds motivation in the possibility that these individuals are holy messengers and holy people in Heaven, and is a reflection on religion as a way to find comfort in life, though the meaning of this work goes further than this. The character of Longfellow is influenced in a good way by the concept that such great individuals have lived in the world, to such an extent that the at first terrifying setting ends up being a sheltered and safe place to be. The poem talks about finding a safe place from depression and loneliness, and turning to yourself to help with these issues.

The true value of the poem is solely dependent on how the reader interprets it, there is a multitude of ways to see this work.

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