Peter Quince at the ClavierSusanna's music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death's ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.
The ironic distance of speaking through a literary character is a key gloss on the poem. / For Stevens, the imagination replaced Heaven as the supreme fiction. In this way, the feeling of music and the pleasures of a permanent garden and the beauty of Susanna all dwell endlessly in the mind. /
So who’s the lecher now? The elders, or us — the artists, patrons, museum-goers and internet viewers with our high-toned leering? Poor Susanna. She had a starring role in a morality tale about piety in ancient times, but she has become the naked object of culturally-approved highbrow gazing.
George became associated as patron saint of England in the fourteenth century, replacing St Edmund the Martyr. Since then this flag is commonly identified as the national flag of England.Saint George's Cross - Wikipedia