victoria wheaton
Rail not at Mammon, helots of to-day,
Nor curse Bellona, goddess of the sword,
Nor Tyranny, of Toil meet overlord:
This is your covenant — “You must obey!”
Under its ban your helot-mothers lay;
Your sires, slave-born to slave-born mothers, poured
The gluttons’ wine, or cringed for bed and board:
Why murmur then? And whence your blank dismay?
Nor curse Bellona, goddess of the sword,
Nor Tyranny, of Toil meet overlord:
This is your covenant — “You must obey!”
Under its ban your helot-mothers lay;
Your sires, slave-born to slave-born mothers, poured
The gluttons’ wine, or cringed for bed and board:
Why murmur then? And whence your blank dismay?
Not with red rite of sword on Strife’s wan hill,
’Mid clash of arms and pomp of war’s estate,
Was Freedom slain, and her strong sons laid low,
But in some wild red dawning long ago,
When Man, the savage, took his savage mate,
And beat, and bent, and broke her to his will.
’Mid clash of arms and pomp of war’s estate,
Was Freedom slain, and her strong sons laid low,
But in some wild red dawning long ago,
When Man, the savage, took his savage mate,
And beat, and bent, and broke her to his will.
The first part of the poem is about how slavery was just a thing and people had to do with it without saying anything and that’s just the way life goes. The second part is the pome about a woman speaking up and saying how is it fair that a man can just come up and take charge and take control of our lives without us having to say about it.
I agree with your interpretation of the poem, but I think that the poem is also trying to explain how woman and slaves where forced to except the idea of the white mans nationalistic ideals, the poem also comparing the sense of domination that the white men have as when a parent is telling a child that "If you live under my house you follow my rules" when they say "You must obey!”
ReplyDeleteUnder its ban your helot-mothers lay". The poem is basically saying that the nation is viewed as mother figure who is trying to mold their children ( woman and slaves) into perfection.