The Decay of Religion

The poem’s juxtaposition of the mundane and the divine suggests that the wonder of religious worship has become diluted in the present day. The character of Dionysus can be interpreted as a symbol for a wider spectrum of deities and divine worship (an example of personified synecdoche, or a part representing a larger whole). A once-grand mythic figure, whom the speaker describes as “the god of wine and revelry” (Line 24), has been reduced to a small piece of what might be considered an unsafe or unsavoury area. This scene reflects the dregs of society: those who have been overlooked and forgotten. Here, religion then becomes something which clings to the edges of society, but lacks the power it once had.

This insubstantial tether to the once-revered divine is most apparent in the final stanza. The fallen god drinks from a bag “he...