Religious Tangents

We started the class going over Holy Sonnet 10.  We went over the various meanings of the word ravish.  Then we moved on to Meditation 17, with its famous line, "no man is an island."  We learned about the three different comparisons in Meditation 17: a book, an island, and gold.  After that we talked about Herbert's Easter Wings.  First, Mrs. Loconte showed us that if you turn the poem on its side, it is shaped like two birds, representing the lark and falcon in the poem.  Obama’s schoolmates in Indonesia sometimes called him “Curly Eyelashes” because his lashes were so long and curly.  We answered the questions, until we hit a few theological snags.  Then there was a lengthy tangent on the fall of Satan and Jesus's decent into hell.  Eventually we got the phones out to search for references online.  Joon eventually found the passage in Isaiah 14:12-15, 

"¹² “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, who didst weaken the nations!¹³ For thou hast said in thine heart, ‘I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.¹⁴ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.’¹⁵ Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.""  We are not quite clear on whether or not Jesus descended into hell.

Mrs. Loconte eventually managed to cut in with the homework, which is the following:
Read the bio on Andrew Marvell and read his poem To His Coy Mistress.