1 Cor. 3:22 Death is yours

My Lord I fain would praise thee well but find

Impossibilities block up my pass.

My tongue wants words to tell my thoughts, my mind

Wants thoughts to comprehend thy worth, alas!

Thy glory far surmounts my thoughts, my thoughts  5

Surmount my words: hence little praise is brought.

But seeing non-sense very pleasant is

To parents, flowing from the lisping child

I conju[r]e to thee, hoping thou in this

Will find some hearty praise of mine enfoiled              10

But though my pen dropped golden words, yet would

Thy glory far out-shine my praise in gold.

Summary: 

The first two stanzas of this poem begin with a complaint that he is unable to offer sufficient praise to God. The argument of the first stanza is that, I cannot think sufficient thoughts of you and thus I have no sufficient words. This is true, because God’s worth is greater than any thought or word I could express.

Praise of the ineffable:

The second stanza continues the same vein: Even if I could write word of gold, you would still outstrip human speech. But, parents take delight in the nonsense words of a child; and so I hope that you will take delight in my words.

The text which may lie behind Taylor’s introduction is found in Paul:

2 Corinthians 12:1–4 (AV) 

¹ It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. ² I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven. ³ And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) ⁴ How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. 

There is also a text related on the question of speaking:

⁸ Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: 

1 Peter 1:8 (AV). It is not merely a matter of Taylor’s personal inadequacy: Built into the very nature of a discussion of God’s glory is the inability to capture it in words. We have here two related concepts. First, there is the inadequacy of language generally. Second, the effect of such glory renders the human being unable to articulate the effect.

Jonathan Edwards draws these strands together in the concept of happiness:

Happiness is very often in Scripture called by the name of glory, or included in that name in Scripture. God’s eternal glory includes his blessedness, and when we read of the glorifying of Christ, and the glory which the Father has given him, it includes his heavenly joy. And so when we read of the glory promised to or conferred on the saints, and of their being glorified, their unspeakable happiness is a main thing intended. Their joy is full of glory, and they are made happy in partaking of Christ’s glory. 

Jonathan Edwards, The Miscellanies: (Entry Nos. 833–1152), ed. Harry S. Stout, Amy Plantinga Pauw, and Perry Miller, vol. 20, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002), 466.

John Gibbon writes of “unspeakable comfort,” “Here is unspeakable comfort for every humble, though doubting, soul; every contrite spirit, that hungers and thirsts after righteousness.” James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 5 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 324. 

Thomas Boston names heaven and hell both places of unspeakable:

Heaven’s happiness must needs be unspeakable, in respect of the society there. The saints going thither shall no more be in a lonely condition, but have the pleasant society of other saints perfected, holy angels, the man Christ, and God himself. The society of saints here is very comfortable, how much more the general assembly of them in heaven? There are the angels, the courtiers of the great King burning with love to God, and warm love to the saints. Yea there is the tabernacle of God with men, Rev. 21:3.

Hell’s horror must be unspeakable also, in regard of the society there. The appearance of one evil spirit now strikes the children of men with terror; but who can conceive the horror of being cast into one prison, with the damned crew, to hear the hissings of these serpents, the roarings of these devouring lions, the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of the teeth of the wicked sunk in despair? and that for ever!

Thomas Boston, The Whole Works of Thomas Boston: A Soliloquy on the Art of Man-Fishing, ed. Samuel M‘Millan, vol. 5 (Aberdeen: George and Robert King, 1849), 411.

In these instances, we can think of two ways in the glory spoken of is unspeakable: First, are the necessary limitations of language. When speaking of “heaven” or God’s glory, we are involved in a necessary abstraction, because such things are not concrete in the world. Therefore, language is to analogy:

83. THEOLOGY. The things of Christianity are so spiritual, so refined, so high and abstracted, and so much above the things we ordinarily converse with and our common affairs, to which we adapt our words; and language not supplying of us with words completely adapted to those high and abstracted ideas, we are forced to use words which do no otherwise exhibit what we would than analogically. Which words in their ordinary use do not in everything, but only in some part, exhibit what we intend they should when used in divinity; and therefore [does] religion [abound] with so many paradoxes and seeming contradictions. And it is for want of distinguishing thus in the meaning of words in divinity, from what is intended by them in their ordinary use, that arise most of the jangles about religion in the world. And to one who is not much [used] to elevated thought, many things, that are in themselves as easy and natural as the things we every day converse with, seem like impossibility and confusion. ’Tis so in every case: the more abstracted the science is, and by how much the higher nature those things are of which that science treats, by so much the more [will] our way of thinking and speaking of the things of that science be beside our way of thinking and speaking of ordinary things, and by so much the more will that science abound with paradoxes and seeming contradictions.

Jonathan Edwards, The “Miscellanies”: (Entry Nos. A–z, Aa–zz, 1–500), ed. Thomas A. Schafer and Harry S. Stout, Corrected Edition., vol. 13, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2002), 249. Taylor could use “golden words”, but such words would necessarily be less than the original.

Analogical words are problematic when speaking of divine things, because only by there being some middle term, something the creation which has a correspondence on some point with the divine can the discussion take place. 

The sheer difficulty of this process is seen the Scriptural language of things such as “pure gold transparent as glass.” (Rev. 21:21) Pure gold is not transparent, and such was the limits of language for John. Jesus speaking of hell in terms of fire, and “outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12, 13:42). We are left with Milton’s “darkness visible.”

My thoughts/ Surmount my words: This adds an additional level to the ineffable object of praise. Taylor points to thoughts which he cannot articulate. This may point to Romans 8:26, “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” The NRSV has it: “²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

Thinking of the difficulty in speaking of divine things casts a certain light on Wordsworth’s famous lines,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

He is arguing for a divinity in nature. 

Be seeing non-sense very pleasant is

To parents, flowing from the lisping child

The one way to approach God in all of this is as a child. This plays upon both the very human analogy, but also upon the language of Jesus in Matthew 18:

Matthew 18:2–4 (AV)

2 And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Conjue: I assume this is a misspelling of “conjure” used in the archaic sense of “solemn appeal”.

Enfoiled: covered in gold.

Prosody:

I rather liked this bit:

My tongue wants words to tell my thoughts, my mind

Wants thoughts to comprehend thy worth, alas!

Thy glory far surmounts my thoughts, my thoughts  5

Surmount my words: hence little praise is brought.

The effect here is to run each of the lines together, like thoughts which fall down the stairs one after the other. He does this with two techniques. First, by means of enjambment: he begins the fourth on the third; the sixth line begins on the fifth. 

He second he uses a great deal of repetition:

My tongue wants words to tell my thoughts, my mind

Wants thoughts to comprehend thy worth, alas!

Thy glory far surmounts my thoughts, my thoughts  5

Surmount my words: hence little praise is brought.

My tongue wants words

my mind Wants thoughts

surmounts my thoughts, my thoughts   5

Surmount my words

There is slight variation:

to tell my thoughts, 

to comprehend thy worth

There is the alliteration on “worth/words”

Also of note is the repletion of “g” and “l”:

But though my pen dropped golden words, yet would

Thy glory far out-shine my praise in gold.