SOURCE: Coulthard, A. R. “Ransom's ‘Vision by Sweetwater.’” The Explicator 46, no. 3 (spring 1988): 41-2.

In the following essay, Coulthard links “Vision of Sweetwater” to the Susanna story in the biblical Apocrypha.

“Where have I seen before, against the wind, / These bright virgins, robed and bare of bonnet?” the narrator of John Crowe Ransom's “Vision by Sweetwater” wonders of the young visitors to his aunt's farm. He has “seen” them in the Apocrypha account of Susanna and the elders, a fact that elucidates the meaning of this otherwise bewildering poem.

Lust is the link between Ransom's poem and the Susanna story. What seem mere “girls” to the aunt are “like a dream of ladies sweeping by” to the coming-of-age narrator. Though just dawning, his sexual yearning is as ancient as the elders' inflamed desire to violate the pure and innocent Susanna. Like the elders, he voyeuristically observes the unaware objects...