"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot", "Go Down, Moses", and "Keep Your Hands on the Plow"

First I will give my opinions on each of the three poems.  Swing Low, Sweet Chariot is very repetitive in what it is saying.  I like the message because what I got out of it is that God is coming to carry this person into heaven. Go Down Moses is very important to me.  At my old school, we learned a lot about Moses and he was my favorite Biblical guy.  I loved watching Prince of Egypt and I will always love hearing the story of Moses and Pharaoh.  This story is again very repetitive, but it is about letting the people go.  Keep your hands on the Plow is also repetitive just like the other two.  All three stories have a religious background to them, and I believe that is very important.


To Emerson, a person's inner voice is God-given, and one only need look to the simplest of humankind, a baby, to see the truth: "Infancy conforms to no one: all conform to it, so that one baby commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it" (Brugman).  He believed that somebody's voice was given to him by God and it relates a lot with the Moses story.  In the poem, it said that the Lord told Moses what to do and he did it ("Go Down" 347).    It is also relevant in the Keep your hands on the plow story.  Paul and Silas shouted and the doors came down ("Keep" 348).  God was the background of the voice and he led them to that point. Thoreau was a very religious man.  He believed that an individual must be self sufficient, but he believed that a little help from God could keep us balanced and on track (Harding).  By the grace of God we can all be saved and that is what the hold on part comes from in the keep your hands on the plow poem.  They were holding on to the fact that someday they will be free.  To go along with what Thoreau believed, I agree totally in what he thought.  As an individual, you need to learn to do things for yourself, but at the same time, it is always alright to lean on God for help.



Brugman, Patricia. "Individual and Society in 'Self-Reliance'." McClinton-Temple, Jennifer ed.
Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2011. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts
On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=&iPin=ETL0377&SingleRecord=True
(accessed January 30, 2012)



"Go Down, Moses." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 347. Print.

Harding, Walter. A Thoreau Handbook by Walter Harding: pp. 131-173 (New York University Press, 1959). © 1959 by New York University Press. Quoted as "Thoreau's Ideas" in Harold Bloom, ed. Henry David Thoreau, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. 10 Feb. 2012.


"Keep Your Hands on the Plow." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 348. Print.

"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 6. Print.