nd death to the worship of man. He is bold in this choice, whereas Whitman makes no reference to religion, and thus absolves himself of the controversy which Stevens addresses head on.Whitman does allude to a divinity, however, which Stevens discounts. Whitman’s narrator, in his discussion of things immortal, alights upon Jupiter as a lord figure. Jupiter, the narrator assures the young weeping girl, will return once the clouds disperse. Yet, even Whitman takes note of the cycle of loss and gain as perhaps more immortal than Jupiter: “Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter” (line 30). As such, Whitman tackles a point which Stevens avoids: Whitman’s narrator sees even the divine as subject to the cycle of immortality, while Stevens does not make such a connection. Stevens, instead, focuses on the human aspects of theist religion, specifically Christianity. In doing so, he eludes a theological argument by focusing instead on the sociological issue of religion.The resulting poems, “On the Beach at Night” and “Sunday Morning,” express similar beliefs about the cyclical nature of life. Their similar structures, of a doubting character and persuasively responding narrator, allow the poets to profess their beliefs about the character of mortal life. And although Stevens focuses on refuting his contemporary religious practices and Whitman centers on acknowledging his personal theology, the poems equally address the search for immortality in the human world....
