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28th Meditation, Edward Taylor, Grace, John 1, Literature, poem, Poetry
Thou, thou my Lord, art full, top full of Grace,
The golden sea of grace whose springs thence come
And precious drills, boiling in every place.
Untap they cask and let my cup catch some
Although it is in an earthen vessel’s case
Let it no empty vessel be of grace.
This stanza begins with two stressed syllables separated by a pause: THOU — THOU my LORD…. The emphasis thus falls most heavily upon the addressee. This functions almost as a new invocation: he has asked to fill him, and here he repeats and makes even more emphatic the call for grace.
In the second half of the line, Taylor does something similar where he repeats “full” with an emphasis falling on the second full (which is not merely full, but is “top full”).
Although it is a “fault” with the line, it ends with an emphasized “grace”. The fault is that Taylor has put 6 stresses in a 5 stress line. Yet even though it is a technical fault, it helps underscore the desire of the poet. I truly need this.
The second line smooths out with a fine alliteration of “g” from the end of the first line: grace … golden … grace.
The springs are rising up from the depth of the sea: the sea is so completely filled with grace, and grace wells-up continually so that the surface is “boiling” with rising streams of grace. And so matches the nature of the gospel of our grace: Our need is continual, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ is greater, inexhaustible. No matter the depth of our need, it cannot begin to exhaust the supply.
A hymn has it
Grace, grace, God’s grace
Grace that is greater than all our sin.
The theology which underlies Taylor’s prayer in this poem: his own inability and need vs. Christ’s inexhaustive grace owes much to Luther’s statement in the Heidelberg Disputations no 18, “It is certain that one must utterly despair of oneself in order to be made fit to receive the grace of Christ.” Whether Taylor ever read the disputations, I do not know. But the theology set forth there was much developed by Lutheran and Reformed theologians and showed up theology which Taylor would have known.
He then uses the image of a cask filled with wine: He asks that the cask be tapped and that the grace flow into the empty, earthen vessel, until it is full:
Untap they cask and let my cup catch some
Although it is in an earthen vessel’s case
Let it no empty vessel be of grace.