Good Friday (am I stone and not a sheep?)

Cruxifixction

Rossetti is debating her own religion

Form

Ballad

Quatrains, romanticising her religion

ABBA, CDDC, EFEF, GHGH

Devotional Poem

Prayer sounding = yearning, expressing connection with God

Context

• Originally published in book of Tractarian poetry

• Published in devotional section

• Good Friday devised from God’s Friday

• Moses was often portrayed as a Shepard

What happens?

1. Speaker imagines themself standing under the cross that Jesus was crucified

2. Speaker remains unmoved, unlike all other witnesses

3. Asks Jesus to look at him/her and break this hardness/heartness

The women (3 Mary’s)

Speaker compares self to “those women”

They loved Christ and “with exceeding grief lamented Thee”

Speaker wants to be part of it

Numbness felt creates a separation from this experience

“Thief”

Even in own suffering, still moved tears by Jesus’s innocence

Metre

Iambic trimester

“Sheep”

Vulnerable, tender, follower

Shepard (Moses), Bible

“To number”

Cold, calculated and emotionless

“Not so”

Separation of speaker from others. Extent of others grief

Repetition

“Am I a stone”

Drawing blood from stone. Hard, cold, immune