“A Man Adrift on a Slim Spar” – Stephen Crane

A man adrift on a slim spar
A horizon smaller than the rim of a bottle
Tented waves rearing lashy dark points
The near whine of froth in circles.
God is cold.

The puff of a coat imprisoning air.
A face kissing the water-death
A weary slow sway of a lost hand
And the sea, the moving sea, the sea. God is cold.

The incessant raise and swing of the sea
And growl after growl of crest
The sinkings, green, seething, endless
The upheaval half-completed. God is cold.

The seas are in the hollow of The Hand;
Oceans may be turned to a spray
Raining down through the stars
Because of a gesture of pity toward a babe.
Oceans may become grey ashes,
Die with a long moan and a roar
Amid the tumult of the fishes
And the cries of the ships, Because The Hand beckons the mice.

A horizon smaller than a doomed assassin’s cap,
Inky, surging tumults
A reeling, drunken sky and no sky
A pale had sliding from a polished spar.
God is cold.

When I originally began to look at this poem, I immediately noticed a difference in the structure of the poem. The first thing that caught my eye was that the repeated ‘God is cold’ at the end of most of the stanzas was not present in the middle stanza. I also realized how the middle stanza is longer than the others around it, and that made me coincidentally think about the poem ‘The Map’. Then once I read deeper into the poem I relieved yet another difference. All of the stanzas around the middle stanza seem to be talking about the terrible wraths of the ocean. However, the middle stanza seems to be more in praise of God. The stanza praises the power of God and portrays him as an almighty figure while the surrounding stanzas view him in a fearful manner. The poem is set up in a contrast where God is seen as powerful in an ultimate sense but is also cold in a harsh sense.