Heaven

The setting the poem is most concerned with is Heaven. The speaker imagines it as a "Holy room," a very specific and material place (1). Details of what it looks like are not provided, but this description still creates a material sense of Heaven as a place as real as any on Earth.

The Sickroom

Heaven is contrasted with the physical place where the poem is actually taking place: the speaker's sickroom. No real physical depiction of this room is provided, other than the fact that the speaker is lying "flat on this bed," lain low by his illness (8). Nonetheless, this detail allows the reader to imagine this setting, and the patient and physicians who occupy it.