Amazing Grace

“Light Shining Out of Darkness” by William Cowper (1774)

English poet Cowper and Newton were friends who composed poetry together and published their work in the same collection. Like in Newton’s hymn, Cowper’s hymn presents God as an indomitable force that provides permanence and supplies hope within a precarious world. However, unlike Newton, whose God is an intangible force of grace, Cowper gives his version of God concrete traits like “footsteps” (Line 3). 

“Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan (1962)

Like “Amazing Grace,” “Blowin’ in the Wind” explicitly portrays the precarious world. The solution to the violence and iniquity lies in the wind—a powerful force that offers the stability of omnipresence and can bolster people the way that Newton’s God uplifts Newton’s speaker. 

“Speech to the Young” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1991)

In this poetic address, Brooks’s speaker tells young people not to strive for dramatic triumphs but to humbly engage with the present—a message starkly different from Newton’s narrative of conversion. Salvation and transformation doesn’t occur through a theatrical embrace of God; rather, progress manifests doggedly and quietly.