SOURCE: “Allen Tate's ‘The Cross,’” in Renascence, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, Spring, 1966, pp. 156-60.

In the following excerpt, O'Dea explains that Allen Tate's “The Cross,” while possessing religious subject matter is not a religious poem.

There is a place that some men know, I cannot see the whole of it Nor how I came there. Long ago Flame burst out of a secret pit Crushing the world with such a light The day-sky fell to moonless black, The kingly sun to hateful night For those, once seeing, turning back; For love so hates mortality Which is the providence of life She will not let it blessed be But curses it with mortal strife, Until beside the blinding rood Within that world-destroying pit—Like young wolves that have tasted blood, Of death, men taste no more of it. So blind, in so severe a place (All live before in the...