A Draught of Sunshine explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Dreams and Escape

  The speaker seeks escape from earthly bounds through a draught of sunshine, leading to a soul-flight and a desire for divine union.

• Mortality and the Sublime

  The poem explores the terrifying division of soul and body, and the sublime experience of approaching the divine, which borders on madness.

Characters to notice

• Unknown

  The speaker who rejects earthly wines and seeks divine intoxication.

• Apollo

  Invoked as the God of Song and the Meridian, the source of the golden sunshine and the Delphian pain.

Key passages

• “Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port, Away with old Hock and Madeira, Too earthly ye are for my sport; There’s a beverage brighter and clearer.”

  Reject all earthly wines, for they are too mundane; I seek a drink that is more luminous and pure.

  The speaker dismisses conventional alcoholic drinks in favor of a metaphorical, celestial beverage.

• “My bowl is the sky, And I drink at my eye, Till I feel in the brain A Delphian pain.”

  The sky is my cup, and I drink through sight until I experience an inspired, almost painful ecstasy in my mind.

  The act of seeing the sky becomes an intoxicating, visionary experience akin to the prophetic frenzy of Delphi.

• “It is an awful mission, A terrible division; And leaves a gulf austere To be fill’d with worldly fear.”

  This separation of soul from body is a frightening task, creating a stark void that fills with earthly anxieties.

  The speaker describes the terrifying nature of spiritual transcendence and the resulting fear of the mundane world.

• “As doth a mother wild, When her young infant child Is in an eagle’s claws.”

  Like a frantic mother watching her child seized by an eagle.

  A simile illustrating the panic and helplessness felt when the soul is carried away from the body.