Pastoral
Pastoral - context Summary
Published in Spring and All
Published in 1923 in Spring and All, William Carlos Williams’s "Pastoral" frames a small city scene to question social and spiritual hierarchies. Ordinary figures—a sparrow, a dog-lime gatherer, an Episcopal minister—are placed side by side so the reader must judge who is truly noble. The poem reflects Williams’s modernist interest in everyday language and civic attention, using plain observation to unsettle conventional moral assumptions.
Read Complete AnalysesThe little sparrows hop ingenuously about the pavement quarreling with sharp voices over those things that interest them. But we who are wiser shut ourselves in on either hand and no one knows whether we think good or evil. Meanwhile, the old man who goes about gathering dog-lime walks in the gutter without looking up and his tread is more majestic than that of the Episcopal minister approaching the pulpit of a Sunday. These things astonish me beyond words.
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