The Splendour Of God By Joseph Mary Plunkett: Poem And Meaning

The poem, the splendour of God, is a great Irish poem that comes in at number 75 on the top 100 Irish poems list.

And yes, you guessed it, the Irish poem is a religious poem about God. Joseph Mary Plunkett was born in Dublin. During 1916 Rising, he was one of the signers of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. He was imprisoned by the English army in the Richmond Barracks. On the night of 3 May, only hours before his execution in the yard of Kilmainham Gaol early on 4 May, he married his fiancée, Grace Gifford, in the prison chapel. He died at the age of 28. His friend Thomas McDonagh was executed the day before him.

Given the circumstances, it is no wonder that he reflected in God.

The Splendour of God

The drunken stars stagger across the sky,
The moon wavers and sways like a wind-blown bud,
Beneath my feet the earth like drifting scud
Lapses and slides, wallows and shoots on high;
Immovable things start suddenly flying by,
The city shakes and quavers, a city of mud
And ooze—a brawling cataract is my blood
Of molten metal and fire—like God am I.

When God crushes his passion-fruit for our thirst
And the universe totters—I have burst the grape
Of the world, and let its powerful blood escape
Untasted—crying whether my vision durst
See God’s high glory in a girl’s soft shape—
God! Is my worship blessed or accurst?

The Splendour of God: meaning and analysis

What it means

‘The Splendour of God’ is a sonnet full of reeling, dizzy images. The stars stagger like drunks, the moon sways, the earth slides beneath the speaker’s feet and the city shakes. The whole universe seems unsteady. Then the poem turns: the speaker is drunk on a fire of his own, and in it he feels like God. He has seen God’s glory in the shape of a woman he loves, and he ends by asking whether worship like that is blessed or cursed.

Plunkett was a deeply religious, mystical poet, and the poem shows the tension in much of his work between love of God and earthly, romantic love. Read in the light of his execution in 1916 and his marriage to Grace Gifford hours before, it gains an extra charge.

Form

A sonnet with an unusually intense, rushing rhythm and heavy use of dashes and exclamations, which suit its ecstatic subject.

Key themes

Religious ecstasy
Earthly and divine love
Chaos and order

More Irish poems

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