Children of Light
Children of Light - meaning Summary
Inherited Violence and Light
Lowell's poem confronts American origins, contrasting the founders' self-image as bearers of light with the violence underlying settlement. It links Puritan and colonial zeal to dispossession and death, suggesting that modern progress, with searchlights and glass houses, still rests on buried crimes. Religious and biblical language frames a nation built on sacrifice and unacknowledged blood, and the recurring image of burning implies ongoing moral and social cost that haunts contemporary prosperity.
Read Complete AnalysesOur fathers wrung their bread from stocks and stones And fenced their gardens with the Redmen's bones; Embarking from the Nether Land of Holland, Pilgrims unhouseled by Geneva's night, They planted here the Serpent's seeds of light; And here the pivoting searchlights probe to shock The riotous glass houses built on rock, And candles gutter by an empty altar, And light is where the landless blood of Cain Is burning, burning the unburied grain.
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