Poetry analysis - help?

Question

I'm 14 and read this poem on the web site : http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/714.html

recently. Some questions arose in my mind:

1. Why did the villagers pray to God to paralyse the scorpion?

2.Why did the peasants call the world "unreal"?

3.What does "the peace of understanding on each face" mean?

4.Explain "I watched the flame feeding on my mother".

why does the poet refer to the scorpions tail as diabolic?

5.What does "hybrid" mean in this poem/

Thank you for your answers....this is not an assignment or report, but just a hobby(I love reading and analysing poetry, and write too.)

Answer 1

1: the poem doesnt explicitely state the scorpion as the one they're praying against. it just says the Evil one. and note Evil is capitalized. so this could denote a person or an entity, possible the hand of the Devil? i dont actually think it is the Scorpion. also notice that scorpion is not capitalized throughout the poem. so that also contributes to it not being the scorpion.

2: Unreal seems to be referencing the cruel world, possibly. or equally filling this spot (as well as fitting to the 1st one) it could mean that it is not on this earth, maybe its some sort of perfect world where nothing bad happens. which could mean that maybe its Heaven. and the Evil one is actually God punishing the women for some sort of deed she did.

Intermezzo: let me just say right here, a poem means something different to pretty much everybody. so just cause these are my beliefs. doesn't mean you should believe it too.

continuing..

3: Again this falls in perfectly with my thoughts above. you must read the entire context very closely to understand it. "May the poison purify your flesh of desire, and your spirit of ambition,

they said, and they sat around on the floor with my mother in the centre.

the peace of understanding on each face."

to purify her of the flesh of desire. Desire seems to be a root of evil because desire is what leads us to do many Sins.  so again maybe she committed a sin. and God was displeased. this also brings us to our next question

4: the Flame could be the flame of h**l nuff said.

unnumbered question: i'm thinking he used it as a reference to the Devil, Diablo is Devil in Spanish, and notice Diablo has unique sound connected to Diabolic. they sound something of the same. could jsut be me, but thats what i believe.

5: i'm not sure if Hybrid has any sort of symbolic meaning. because its referenced in a listing, and normally, listings of things are only there to explain things. but taking it literally i would say it would be a mixture of any two things in the list.

well thats it, this poem definitely has a lot of meaning in it, but like i said before, poems mean different things to different people. and me being only 15 and a intermediate poet i probably dont have enough experience to take it for everything.

PS. i too love analyzing poems

look for some of Shakespeares poems

or Robert Frost

and most definitely Edgar Allen Poe

have fun! and i hope i helped a little.