NON-AFRICAN POETRY
Examine the poet’s attitude to man in “Upon An Honest Man’s Fortune“
Explanation
Having dismissed the astrologers as unreliable, the poet goes on to address with displeasure man' regrettable attitude to God as regards his belief in astrology.
The poet sees man as incredibly thoughtless and faithless for locking up the endowments bestowed upon him by God.
He laments man's failure to appreciate the fact that God loves him so much that He makes and places him over and above all other creatures and even makes the angels to do his bidding.
The poet continues by chiding man for his inexplicable ignorance and stupidity in seeking salvation and refuge in fortune-tellers who themselves are as "blind" as their "calculations" and as "drunken" as their "conjectures".
It baffles the poet that man is so short-sighted that he gives little or no thought to God's omnipotence and fails to realize that it is only in him that "all truth", "all influence" and "all fate" reside. Still more baffling is his forgetfulness that it is by dint of hard work that man can work himself into "a glorious man" since "man is his own star"
The poet also finds man's fear of such facts of life as affliction, sickness and even death as worrisome. Man who is believed to be filled with the spirit of God needs not fear such things since affliction and sickness are the test of endurance and inner will while death is "but another night", a mere transition.