There is an issue about whether Stevens converted to Christianity on his deathbed but his poetry predominantly expresses a naturalistic outlook in which the religious longing for eternal bliss is channeled into a poetic response to nature. "Lunar Paraphrase" can be read as such a response, despite its mention of religious figures. This reading would support what he wrote in "Adagia": "After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption". This enigmatic naturalism is given graceful and elegiac expression in "Sunday Morning". Stevens' skepticism about an afterlife is evident in "Of Heaven Considered as a Tomb". The finality of death is given emphatic expression in "Cortège for Rosenbloom". "Negation"'s witty depiction of God as a bungling potter indicates that the Deity didn't have a place in Stevens' belief system.