SOURCE: Woodman, Thomas. “Poems on Several Occasions III: ‘A Hymn to Contentment,’ ‘A Night Piece on Death,’ and ‘The Hermit.’” In Thomas Parnell, 67-85. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1934.

In the following essay, Woodman discusses Parnell's three most famous pieces and argues that although they have many aspects to them, he wrote them, most of all, with a Christian purpose in mind.

Pope ends his selection of Parnell's poems with “A Night Piece on Death,” “A Hymn to Contentment,” and “The Hermit.” All three have a Christian seriousness and solemnity of tone, and it was appropriate, in Pope's view, that the volume should rise to this height. They later became Parnell's most famous and influential poems, and they have been praised as innovative, especially imaginative, and even as preromantic works. In each, however, I shall argue, Christian purposes are primary, and the sentiment that later poets and readers found so...