NON —AFRICAN POETRY Comment on the errand of the soul in "The Soul's Errand".

Answer Details

The Soul's Errand, attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh and also known as The Lie, is a bitter, satirical poem in which a dying speaker sends his soul out on a bold mission to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of the world. The errand of the soul is the central organising idea of the poem.

The nature of the errand. The speaker, feeling that he must soon die, commissions his soul as a messenger. He calls it the body's guest and sends it on a thankless errand into a false and rotten world. The soul is to speak the plain truth fearlessly, taking truth itself as its warrant, and wherever it meets falsehood it is to give the world the lie, that is, to accuse each corrupt institution of lying.

The targets of the errand. The soul is sent to confront the great and powerful and to unmask their pretence. It is to tell the court that it glows and shines like rotten wood; to tell the church that it shows what is good yet does no good; to tell rulers and men in authority that they live by favour and act unjustly; to tell the learned that they lack depth, and the ambitious that they climb by flattery. One by one the soul is to expose the falsehood behind courtiers, churchmen, potentates, lawyers, physicians and every proud class of society.

The tone and purpose. The repeated command to give the lie gives the poem a defiant, accusing rhythm. The speaker is fearless because he is dying and has nothing left to lose; the world can do no worse than kill him, and to stab the soul is impossible. The errand therefore expresses a disillusioned man's determination to tell the whole truth about a hypocritical world before he leaves it.

The errand of the soul is thus a mission of fearless truth-telling and moral condemnation, in which the soul acts as a herald exposing the lies of every corrupt part of society.