This poem describes religion in a really interesting way. The poem first introduces this slant of light which I imagined as coming through the windows on a cold Winter afternoon. While light represents light and life and movement, winter naturally makes people want to crawl up and avoid leaving their warm homes and venturing outside. In this way, the light oppresses the speaker because it’s asking her to keep living and going about her day to day life given the cold of winter. Then the speaker compares this oppression to “the Heft\ Of Cathedral Tunes” or the organs which play at a cathedral, which we can connect to religion and religious practices. Already, the speaker sets up the negative relationship she has with her religion and Christian faith.

In the second stanza, the speaker moves to say that faith gives us “Heavenly Hurt” but leaves no mark, meaning it leaves internal damage. This idea is furthered in the next line where the speaker describes an “internal difference” for meanings, meanings of the world and life’s truths we can assume. I found the placement of “Heavenly” super interesting in line 5. Heaven implies a non-human ability and ‘other-worldliness’ that physical pain doesn’t really have.  I think also using this hyperbole emphasizes the impact of religion’s pain on an individual’s mind and that it cannot be compared to other hardships or emotional battles; one’s battle with their faith causes them the most internal suffering. I think this nonhuman quality also manifests itself in the third stanza, as the speaker states that no one can teach the pain she speaks about. Once you experience the pain she describes you reach a new level of understanding for suffering because nothing in the past would be able to prepare you for it. I think connecting this pain and suffering back to light that beckons the speaker out and teases it is really interesting, like religion comes and takes away comfort from your mind and internal thoughts.