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Edward Taylor, The Daintiest Draft.3

06 Wednesday Jan 2021

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The third stanza resolves the issue of whether the poet refers to himself (or humanity generally) or to Christ:

But yet thou stem of David’s stock when dry

And shriveled held, although most generous green was lopt

Whose sap a sovereign solder is, whereby

The breach repaired is in which it’s dropped.

Oh gracious twig! Thou cut off? Bleed rich juice

T’cement the breach, and glory’s shine reduce?

The “stem of David’s stock” can only refer to Jesus, who is the “Son of David” par excellence (“Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” Mark 10:47). 

The language of “stock” is a metaphor for a descendent. Thus, the development of the image of this stock=tree in terms of being dry or green sounds as if the poet were merely developing the metaphor at greater length. This is true, but there is also a direct reference to the words of Jesus in this same context.

There is a scene recorded in Luke’s Gospel of a conversation Jesus has with some women while being marched to Golgotha to be crucified:

Luke 23:27–31 (KJV)

27 And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. 28 But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. 29 For, behold, the days are coming, in the which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. 30 Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. 31 For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?

Thus the green tree cut, “although most generous green was lopt.” There is one further allusion contained within these lines:

Isaiah 53:2 (KJV)

      2       For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant,

      And as a root out of a dry ground:

      He hath no form nor comeliness;

      And when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

The concept here is that Christ is a green branch that was cut down and then dried as its sap runs out. 

The sap is a “sovereign solder”, a means of sealing together two broken parts. The sap in this instance is the blood of Christ lost in crucifixion. 

What is not immediately clear from the poem is what the solder repairs. The first two stanzas speak of a ruined palace/image. A palace is not repaired by means of a solder. The image of a solder repairs a break between two things. 

The image of solder seems to be drawn from (1) the sap=blood; (2) the break of the branch which bleeds; (3) and then the healing of the branch. The sap from the breach in the branch becomes the solder which heals the branch. 

Taylor does something fascinating here. The branch itself is healed by means of the sap which runs from the breach:

Whose sap a sovereign solder is, whereby

The breach repaired is in which it’s dropped.

Oh gracious twig! Thou cut off? Bleed rich juice

T’cement the breach, and glory’s shine reduce?

In particular note, “Bleed rich juice/T’cement the breach”. The blood spent heals the wound which caused the bleeding.  This makes for a fascinating theological point.

The death of Christ heals the breach between God and Man. In the body of Christ, the bridge and the breach between God and Man are manifest: Christ is God and Man, the mediator between the two. The death of the mediator heals the breach. 

But there is another level at work in Taylor’s poem: The death of Christ, the wounding of his body is the breach between God and Man. The cross is an assault upon God.

This is brought out by Psalm 2 which is a commentary upon the death of Christ:

Psalm 2:1–6 (KJV) 

1           Why do the heathen rage, 

And the people imagine a vain thing? 

2           The kings of the earth set themselves,

And the rulers take counsel together, 

Against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, 

3           Let us break their bands asunder, 

And cast away their cords from us. 

4           He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: 

The Lord shall have them in derision. 

5           Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, 

And vex them in his sore displeasure. 

6           Yet have I set my king 

Upon my holy hill of Zion. 

The nations attack the Lord in the person of Christ, thinking to free themselves. But in so doing, rather than prevailing, they are witnesses to a coronation; the cross is a throne seen from the right perspective.

Taylor is working on this paradox with these lines: The wound is healed by the blood which flows from the wound. The death of Christ pays for the sin of killing Christ. The breaking of the body of the one who stands between God and Man heals the breach between God and Man. 

Taylor underscores the surprise of the breach being the repair by means of the meter:

Oh GRACious twig! THOU CUT-OFF? BLEED rich JUICE

The excess accented syllables requires one to show down to even say the words. 

Finally, Taylor makes good use of alliteration of D’s and S’s:

But yet thou stem of David’s stock when dry

And shriveled held, although most generous green was lopt

Whose sap a sovereign solder is, whereby

The breach repaired is in which it’s dropped.

Edward Taylor, The Daintiest Draft.1

19 Saturday Dec 2020

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Meditation 30, First Series

2 Cor. 5:17

This poem contains an interesting ambiguity in the way in the precise focus of poem is in places difficult to find. The overall thrust of the poem is a prayer that the Lord would repair the ruined palace of the human being. It is a prayer that the Lord would make the poet into something new

Lord, make me thy new creature. (line 45). Which comes from the text for the meditation, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.” 2 Cor. 5:17.

The “palace” in need of repair is the human being. The ambiguity comes about by the unclear focus as to whether it is the poet or Christ who is immediately in view. To call the poet himself “the stateliest palace angels e’er did view” (3) seems wrong. That would necessarily be Christ, himself.  

It would also be appropriate to write that the palace had been spoiled by an enemy. In Isaiah 52:14, the prophet writes that “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of man.”

In the second stanza, the poet writes

Thou wast more glorious than glory’s wealth. (8)

Again, this would be more appropriately addressed to Christ, than to read this as the poet writing thus of himself fin the second person. 

But then in line 26, Taylor writes

My Lord, repair thy palace. 

And the remainder of the poem unambiguously reckons the poet to be the palace to be repaired, with the prayer to be made a new creature being the sum of that prayer. The deliberate use of the word “palace” then brings us back to the first stanza and the reference to “the stateliest palace”. It is possible the move referenes to two separate palaces. 

But I suspect that Taylor is doing something else. The palace is the image of God which is the purpose and the created nature of each human being (“the image of thyself”). Jesus is the perfect representation of that image; human beings who were created to accurately reflect that image are now spoiled and need to be remade to display that image.

The ambiguity which runs in this poem in his moving between apparent references to Christ and then to the poet can be sorted by using Colossians 3:10 as a key:

And we have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. 

In Colossians 1:16 Paul identifies the creator as Christ, “For by him all things were created.” And in verse 15, Paul identified Christ as “the image of the invisible God.” 

The ambiguity in the poem as to the reference of the palace being renewed lies in the identification of the Christian with Christ. I think that Taylor is playing off of this identification and purposefully creating an ambiguity of a dual reference. This is inherent in text for the poem. Consider:

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.

To be “in Christ” is to be the “new creature”. What appertains to Christ becomes in a manner impressed upon the creature in Christ. This identification of the individual believer with Christ lies at the heart of this poem. 

The first stanza sets up the problem:

The daintiest draft thy pencil ever drew

The finest vessel, Lord, thy fingers framed

The stateliest palace angels e’er did view

Under thy hatch betwixt decks here contained

Broke, marred, spoiled, undone, defiled doth lie

In rubbish ruined by thine enemy. 

It begins with a series of three parallel descriptions of the object of the poem: “The daintiest draft”, “the finest vessel,” “the stateliest palace.” Dainty no longer carries the same connotation as it did for Taylor, but the meaning is apparent by looking at the parallel construction: This is the finest which could be. To call a human being a “draft” (a drawing) is an interesting play on the concept of “image.”

A vessel and palace likewise make sense as that bears or displays something greater. 

As we have previously considered, the reference is ambiguous in that it appears to refer to Christ (who would be the greatest of all examples) and yet the reference in the end will be to Taylor and his prayer to be remade.

The fourth line creates a nearly impossible combination of metaphors: this draft, vessel, palace, is now stowed between the decks of a ship. A draft could easily fit below deck, but to put a ship or even more strangely a palace below deck is impossible. Perhaps the use of the word “vessel” in line 2 suggested a return to a ship in line 4.

This for Taylor must have been a vivid image, when we realize that he had taken a ship from England to New England in the 17th century, which would have been a couple of months in a cramped tiny ship in the middle of the Atlantic. That many things must be been spoiled below decks on these trips in the salt water and bilge I take for granted. 

And it is there in the depths of the vessel, churning on the sea, something of surpassing value. An enemy has thrown it into the bilge where is now ruined and sloshing in the half light.

a bilge pump

This is an apt image for the fallen human race; and for the head of the redeemed race, the Second Adam Christ as he was struck down at the cross. 

And before leaving this stanza we should know the alliteration:

The daintiest draft thy pencil ever drew

The finest vessel, Lord, thy fingers framed

The stateliest palace angels e’er did view

Under thy hatch betwixt decks here contained

Broke, marred, spoiled, undone, defiled doth lie

In rubbish ruined by thine enemy. 

Edward Taylor, My Shattered Fancy.6

01 Tuesday Dec 2020

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But, Lord, as burnished sunbeams forth out fly,
Let angel-shine forth in my life outflame,
That I may grace Thy graceful family
And not to Thy relations be a shame.
Make me Thy graft, be Thou my golden stock.
Thy glory then I’ll make my fruits and crop. 

The rhythm of this final stanza is quite regular until the accent on the first syllable of the fifth line:

MAKE ME, thy GRAFT, be THOU my GOLDen STOCK

The emphasis works particularly well here: it puts an emphasis on an element of the prayer. The entire poem has been a meditation upon what it would be to be grafted into Christ and here he makes his prayer: Make me that graft. The spondee on the first foot of the line makes the prayer a plea, a demand: DO THIS FOR ME!

The language of the angels and fire is not mere commonplace for bright. In Hebrews 1:7 it reads


Of the angels he says

He makes his angels winds,

And his ministers a flame of fire. 

And thus, while he is not praying to be made an angel for a fire, the allusion to angles and flame has a basis in the glory given to Christ. The rest of the chapter in Hebrews describes the greatness of Christ over the angelic host. 

This last stanza is not merely a prayer that the wonder of being joined to Christ should be Taylor’s. There is the issue honor and shame. 

The concept of shame and honor are a major theme throughout the Bible. Shame is first seen in Genesis 2 when Adam and Eve. They experience shame as a result of their sinfulness. The biblical concept of shame contains both an objective and subjective element – both of which are present in the Genesis account. 

First, there is the subjective element: I feel ashamed of what I have done. I am not mere guilty, but I worthy to be excluded. This is shown by the human pair both hiding in the trees and trying to make clothing. They feel they cannot be seen by God.

Second, there is an objective element: shame from the position of the other. This is typically seen as being vulnerable to the power of another. For instance in Psalm 25:2, the prayer reads:

O my God, in you I trust let me not be put to shame

Let not my enemies exult over me.

To be in shame is for the enemy to exult. Or in 37:1

In you, O LORD, do I take refuge; 

Let me never be put to shame

In your righteousness deliver me. 

To be protected from shame is to be rescued. 

There is also the reversal of shame. Since suffering, particularly at the hands of an enemy is shameful. But, as Peter writes, the apparent shame of suffering will be reversed by Christ:

1 Peter 1:6–8  

6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: 7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: 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: 

Now shame is something which one can convey to others. To be in the company of one who is shameful is to shame me. This is seen by the nature of being unclean under Mosaic Law: one can convey uncleanness by contact. 

To bring Taylor into the relations around Christ has the power to bring shame upon the family. And so Taylor prays that he not bring such shame

But, Lord, as burnished sunbeams forth out fly,

Let angel-shine forth in my life outflame,
That I may grace Thy graceful family
And not to Thy relations be a shame.

Thus, to avoid such shame, Taylor is dependent upon Christ to make him glorious. Taylor is not contending that such glory is inherent in him – he is asking that be made in him. 

This particular prayer has an interesting relation to Hebrews 2 which describes Christ’s relationship to humanity. That God would be sinful humanity would cast shame upon God. God should be ashamed to be with human beings, who are not glorious (which is obvious if you have ever met one of us). But the Son is not ashamed to be called our brother:

Hebrews 2:10–13 (KJV 1900)

10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. 11 For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12 Saying, I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee. 13 And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.

The Son is not ashamed because he sanctifies – he makes holy (which is glorious) – his own. Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them brothers. He makes his people who are not glorious glorious and so fit to live with him. 

There is a line in C.S. Lewis to the effect that the least saint in glory would be such a wonder we would all be tempted to worship that human being were we to see such a one. 

And indeed that hope to be glorious is not a matter of vanity; it is lovely. We are often so petty and ridiculous because we seek to make ourselves glorious – and not receive true glory from our Creator. 

Edward Taylor, My Shattered Fancy.5

25 Wednesday Nov 2020

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This stanza presents a question without an answer, but it does mention the response.

My Lord, what is it that Thou dost bestow?
The praise on this account fills up, and throngs
Eternity brimful, doth overflow
The heavens vast with rich angelic songs.
How should I blush? How tremble at this thing,
Not having yet my gam-ut learned to sing.

The introductory question, “What is that thou does bestow?” is not directly answered. The implied answer is, An engrafting of your life into my life, which results in you being brought into my web of relationships.

The rhythm of the first line puts the emphasis on the first word of the question, “What”. It does this by placing the word immediately after a pause and accented syllable. 

my LORD, WHAT is IT that THOU dost BEstow?

Yes, what is it? The rhythm makes it impossible to run past the question. 

It is now interesting that the question is not answered.  It is assumed by the word “this”


The praise on this account fills up, and throngs
Eternity brimful

But he never clearly says what “this” is.  He does raise the matter of relations again in the next stanza, “Thy graceful family”.  But here it is merely implied.

The result of this “this” is unceasing praise throughout heaven:

The praise on this account fills up, and throngs
Eternity brimful, doth overflow
The heavens vast with rich angelic songs.

In this, Taylor is again on solid scriptural ground. First, Taylor has come to a gathering:

Hebrews 12:22–23 (KJV 1900)

22 But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, 23 To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

Second, the most common scene in the pictures of heaven is one of singing:

Revelation 5:8–14 (KJV 1900) 

8 And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. 9 And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; 10 And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. 

11 And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; 12 Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. 13 And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. 14 And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever. 

The picture of heaven being “brimful” and overflowing with song is remarkable. We normally do not picture songs as occupying a space, but here the songs are palpable. 

As is most common in Taylor, he pauses for a moment at the fact that he is not fit to be present in this company. Taylor’s treatise on the Lord’s Supper begins with a discussion of the scene in Matthew 25 of the man who is present at the wedding feast but lacks the proper garments. That image seems to lie behind Taylor’s unfitness which these preparations were met to remedy.

He says:

How should I blush? How tremble at this thing,
Not having yet my gam-ut learned to sing.

His gamut would be the full range music. The original usage from Gamma (the Greek letter) which in Medieval music was on tone lower than middle A + ut. The concept developed into the full range of musical notes which a voice or instrument could produce. In our modern usage, the origin in music has dropped out and now the concept is merely the full range. Here, Taylor has the musical usage in mind:

How can I possibly participate in this singing and not be ashamed – I don’t know how to sing with these angels.

Edward Taylor, My Shattered Fancy.4

22 Sunday Nov 2020

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These two stanzas go together. Each stanza begins with “I being graft in thee.” From that follows the nature of the relationship which now exists between the two. The first of these stanzas speaks of the particular relationships which have come into being. The poet primarily takes on the feminine role; the Lord the masculine. Hence he is sister, mother, spouse. Dove is neutral but in the allusion to Canticles, dove is feminine:

Song of Solomon 6:9 (KJV 1900)
9 My dove, my undefiled is but one;
She is the only one of her mother,
She is the choice one of her that bare her.
The daughters saw her, and blessed her;
Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her.

The ESV translates “undefiled” here as “my perfect one.”

The one characteristic which is unambiguously male is “son”. But in this context, it is the diminutive position, because the Lord is “father.”

Sister is likewise from Canticles (or Song of Solomon). Before reading this it should be noted that “sister” carries the emphasis of the intense closeness of the relationship is not meant to suggest something untoward:

Song of Solomon 4:9–12 (KJV 1900)
9 Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse;
Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes,
With one chain of thy neck.
10 How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse!
How much better is thy love than wine!
And the smell of thine ointments than all spices!
11 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb:
Honey and milk are under thy tongue;
And the smell of thy garments is like the smell of Lebanon.
12 A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse;
A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

As for “mother”, one may ask how the poet could be in the position of “mother” toward the Lord. The answer is from the Lord himself. When Jesus’ family heard he was in a house teaching, “his family heard of it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, ‘He is out of his mind.’” Mark 2:20-21.

As the family pressed for admittance, the matter came to Jesus’ attention:

Mark 3:31–35 (KJV 1900)
31 There came then his brethren and his mother, and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. 32 And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. 33 And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? 34 And he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! 35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.

This also being another reference to “sister.”

As spouse:

Isaiah 54:5 (KJV 1900)
5 For thy Maker is thine husband;
The Lord of hosts is his name;
And thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel;
The God of the whole earth shall he be called.

The most extensive discussion of marriage in the New Testament, Ephesians 5:21-33, speaks directly of human marriage and then applies the same to Christ and the church.

I being graft in Thee, there up do stand
In us relations all that mutual are.
I am Thy patient, pupil, servant, and
Thy sister, mother, dove, spouse, son, and heir.
Thou art my priest, physician, prophet, king,
Lord, brother, bridegroom, father, everything.

The relationship of prophet, priest, king are considered to be the formal offices of Christ, as set forth in the Westminster Confession.

It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only-begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man,1 the Prophet,2 Priest,3 and King;4 the Head and Saviour of his Church,5 the Heir of all things,6 and Judge of the world;7 unto whom he did, from all eternity, give a people to be his seed,8 and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified.9
As for Father, there is the refrain made famous in Messiah:

Isaiah 9:6 (KJV 1900)
6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:
And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God,
The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

In the next stanza on relationship, Taylor says that by being brought into relationship with Christ, he is brought into all of Christ’s relationships. Being in Christ, the relationships an angel has toward Christ are now Taylor’s relationship:
“I thy relations my relations name.”

I being graft in Thee I am grafted here
Into Thy family, and kindred claim
To all in heaven, God, saints, and angels there.
I Thy relations my relations name.
Thy father’s mine, Thy God my God, and I
With saints and angels draw affinity.

The relating of my God-your God, my Father, your Father comes Jesus’s words as he takes leave of Mary Magdalene following the Resurrection:

John 20:17 (KJV 1900)
17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

And so these two stanzas work out the nature of the new relationships gained by the poet upon his union with Christ. First, there are the transformation of the relationships between himself and Christ; and then the transformation of his relationships to others, because he is in Christ.

It cannot be developed here, but at the Fall in Genesis 3, the totality of relationships between the humans and Creation have fundamentally changed for the worse. But here, in God’s Garden, by being brought into relationship in Christ, there is a complete restoration of relationship between God and human; human and all other creatures.

Edward Taylor, My Shattered Fancy.2

11 Wednesday Nov 2020

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Thou! Thou! my dear dear Lord, art this rich tree,
The tree of life within God’s Paradise.
I am a withered twig, dried fit to be
A chat cast in Thy fire, writh off by vice.
Yet if Thy milk-white gracious hand will take me
And graft me in this golden stock, Thou’lt make me.

The first line of the poem breaks the structure of iambic feet with a series of accented syllables:

THOU THOU my DEAR DEAR LORD art this RICH TREE

The repetition and emphasis is emphatic the Lord is the tree. Why the need for this emphasis, what is the effect of it? 

The poet (in his wooling imagination) goes through the Garden of God and comes upon the tree of life, but then something happens to him. The divine tree he realizes to be more than a tree. The tree is already something unreal, it is divine, it is gold – but now something new comes upon his realization: The Lord is the Tree. This tree of life upon which saints and angels live is the Lord himself. 

In this image, Taylor seems to be borrowing a conceit from the book of Daniel. In the fourth chapter we read of the King of Babylon Nebuchadezzar has a dream a great tree in which all the kingdoms of the world rest is the king (“it is thou O king”). Taylor seems to take that image and rework it to apply to the Lord who is the tree of life which upholds the people of God and the divine beings. 

And so the poet finds something he did not expect to find: it was one thing to find the tree, but to learn the Lord is the tree has taken him back.

This begins a rhetoric turn which Taylor will use though out this poem: the repetition of a phrase:

                                    This rich tree

The tree of life. 

The repetition of the phrase with slight variation is a feature of Hebraic poetry (it is more complex than mere repetition) which would be familiar to Taylor from the Bible. 

The phrase “God’s Paradise” harkens back to “God’s Garden” in the first stanza. Paradise equaling a garden. 

Next he brings up “withered twig”. This brings in two allusions. First is the man with the withered hand whom Jesus heals as recounted in Mark 3. Second is the dead branches which are cast in Jesus’s parable of the vine and branches. I will quote it a length because it’s imagery of vines and branches and fruit underlies a great deal of this poem: 

John 15:1–8 (KJV 1900)

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. 2 Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. 3 Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. 5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. 6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

Here Taylor begins as a withered branch. But rather than being cast into the fire, he seeks to be grafted into the tree.

He is asking to have the life of the tree flow into his dead life. Which is also a picture from the Gospel of John, “In him was life.” 

But there is yet another passage which lies behind Taylor’s prayer to be grafted into the tree. This comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans. In his image, Paul is describing the relationship of Gentile believers who are coming to relationship with the Jewish Messiah. Paul says the wild branches of Gentiles are being grafted into the existing tree:

Romans 11:16–21 (KJV 1900) 

16 For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. 17 And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert graffed in among them, and with them partakest of the root and fatness of the olive tree; 18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. 19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. 20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: 21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee. 

Taylor has done something interesting with these various allusions. By using the allusion of a tree and the King of Babylon, the Lord’s position is pastoral and political: he is a protective ruler. The use of “withered” brings to mind Jesus healing the withered arm, which reverses the use of withered in John 15, where the withered branch is burned: Do not burn me, heal me. By then using a branch being grafted onto a tree, Taylor takes the personal prayer and makes it ecclesiastical: To be grafted into the Olive Tree is to be in the Church.

This also alludes back to the final line of the first stanza where the tree holds angels and saints (and again supports the use of the tree as the King). 

By piling up allusions, he creates greater depth in the meaning of the poem.

The third line is well constructed:

I am a withered twig, dried fit to be

The withered in the first half of the line becomes dried in the second half. The repetition again being Hebraic, but also AngloSaxon in the alliterative first and second half of the lines with the rhythm being more of equal stresses than iambs or other regular feet:

I and WITHERed TWIG, DRIED FIT to be 

The pause between twig and dried puts even more emphasis on dried.  I am … DRIED. 

What has caused his trouble: vice. He has fallen into this state due to sin. This is useful because sin is more than a mere action: it has an ontological component: it is not merely breaking a law it is also to be dead.

The stanza then ends with the incomplete idea: Thou’ll make me. 

Make me what? 

Edward Taylor, 28th Meditation.3

08 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Grace, Martin Luther, Puritan

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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.

Notes on “Item” a Poem by William Carlos Willam

06 Thursday Aug 2020

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Item

This, with a face

like a mashed blood orange

that suddenly

would get eyes 

and look up and scream 

War! War!

clutching her

thick, ragged coat

A piece of hat

broken shoes

War! War!

stumbling for dread

at the young men

who with their gun-butts

shove her

Sprawling—

A note 

At the foot of the page

Observations:

The first word, “This” is jarring: When “this” begins a sentence it acts to specify a particular noun: This particular apple (as opposed to all the other apples in the basket). But here, there is no specified noun: simply “This” – which then receives a modifying phrase: “with a face”. But there is no noun to be modified, only a pronoun without an original noun.

However, this lack of specificity is part of the meaning of the poem. In the third stanza we find a possessive, “her”. So we know it is a woman – especially as contrasted with the “young men” of the fifth stanza.

By not immediately identify the woman as a person – but rather as some unspecified object (note the title of the poem is “Item” – which could be the entire poem as in a “news item” or be a reference to the noun specified by “this”; she may be a woman, or simply be reduced to the story about the woman). 

We can a strange hint that there may be a person in this story, when we see the word “face”. But then why “with”; it makes it sound as if the face were an accessory which could be added or removed. Moreover, the image is immediately coupled to a “mashed blood orange”. 

When read of the young men with their gun-butts, the mashed face returns: She has been struck and her face has been destroyed. She also was seen “sprawling”.

The event comes to us out of historical order, but rather in order of comprehension: We move from the image before us – a mashed face of who knows what (it is a “this” not a “her” at first). 

Then the poet picks through the realization: eyes, a voice (she screams) hands which are known only by their action – clutching – he sees the coat, then the broken shoes, then woman now stumbling away from the young men; and here he sees the cause of her distress the young men with guns. 

Another point here: the face is indistinguishable, not quite comprehensible – because he did not see eyes at first. Note the 

that suddenly

would get eyes

The gap brought about by removing the adverb “suddenly” from the stanza of the verb “get” creates a strange distance in the realization. It seems that the poet noticed something which came out of nowhere and then too a moment to realize, oh, these are eyes looking at me.

So now we have a story, the poet comes upon a woman who has been struck in the face by a young man (they must be soldiers because they are identified with “War! War!”). She has sprawled onto the street, her face a bloody mess. She opens her eyes, clutches her old coat about her and tries to stumble to safety away from the soldiers. 

The line breaks come at grammatical structures, rather than completed concepts. As notes, “suddenly” separated not merely in a different line, but also a different stanza from its verb.

Or take these images:

clutching her

thick, ragged coat

A piece of hat

broken shoes

Clutching her what? What is clutching? Next line thick – pause – ragged coat – longer pause – A piece of hat (where is the rest of the hat) – doubled pause – broken shoes. 

By breaking up the images into distinct lines, we can imagine ourselves looking around for the hat, then the shoes – what has happened her? 

Then she begin dread stumbling to escape, standing, falling for broken shoes – trying to escape. 

And now we come to the answer about the “item” – is it the woman or the story? Well the woman certainly is being dehumanized, she is an item. But the poem uses her degradation to make her even less human: She is not the woman the poet saw, rather she is relegated to the news item. When the men strike, they render her so inhuman that they dash clean out of life and into a story: 

at the young men

who with their gun-butts

shove her

Sprawling—

A note 

At the foot of the page

When they strike her, she becomes a footnote in the story about the war. She is not important enough to consider at length, she is merely one of the many who are struck.

What then does the poem do? The poem causes us to toggle between the story about the woman and the reality of it. But it does it in a very different manner than an essay about this event could do. 

An essay has two natural starting places: the writer could start with the news item and then move backwards to the woman who is mentioned in the footnote. A sort of history of the overlooked. I am working through a biography of Napoleon at the moment. In the story of the retreat from Russia in 1812, he is listing the horrifying ravages to soldiers and peasants. The biography accounts in brief stories of soldiers being buried alive by angry peasants, prisoners of war being skinned alive, women being raped and murdered. The horror is unimaginable for me. 

One could take the time and develop more personally who has murdered or flayed or raped. 

Another way to tell this story would be start with the writer: As I was walking, I saw this woman lying in the street. At first I couldn’t tell she was a woman. 

But this poem does something which an essay could not easily do: It causes the reader to experience the event along with the poet. Rather than reading about through an essay – which would ironically make sure that she is reduced to a note on a page, an “item” – the poet forces us to confront the woman and watch her be physically injured and then reduced even further to being the note in the news item. 

The poem paradoxically gets us around the distance of the words which would make the woman an item by using words force us to experience the woman.

William Blake, To Tirzah

31 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Hermeneutics, Literature

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This poem is a good example of how difficult it can be know what the poet intends, particularly when the poet is as deliberately ironic as William Blake. 

This poem also raises the issue of what it means to read something “in context.” Shakespeare and the Bible are famously misused by people who take a particular line wildly out of context. There is a television commercial which advertises a luxury automobile and plays a song which – in its original context — attacks pretension and put-on with material goods. But by using only a portion of the song lyric, the song meant to attack pretension is used to sell pretension.

This short poem is standing by itself one context. In that context, this poem seems to convey a sort of Gnostic Jesus, the body is bad, the soul is good, the hope of life is to be released from the body. “Tirazh” is used as a name for the Northern Kingdom of Israel, following the division of the kingdom into two after the death of Solomon. It is contrast to “Jerusalem,” which would be the heavenly and best.

Tirazh is called a mother of our earthly body which reproduces by means of sexual union, which traps us into a world of sense. The goal of this life is to be finally freed from the body – which the poet claims has been made possible by the “death of Jesus”.

But the poem was a late addition to a collection of poems known as Songs of Experience, which is paired with another collection known as Songs of Innocence. The poems also exist in a larger corpus of poems which develop Blakes philosophy, such as The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

To this difficulty of context, we must remember that Blake is often deliberately ironic. We can never take anything he says at “face value.”

While not at all exhaustive, the following simply raises some questions as to how to interpret this poem when it is put into the context of Blake’s remaining (and largely earlier) work and Blake’s ironic posture as a poet.

To Tirzah

Whate’er is born of moral birth

Must be consuméd with the earth

To rise from generation free, 

Then what have I do to with thee?

Whatever is born will die and return to the earth. The last line is an ironic reworking of Jesus’ words recorded in John 2:4, where Mary tells Jesus that the wedding has run out of wine and Jesus responds, “Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come.” So the poet, seeking to be freed from the enslaving earth says, “What have I to do with thee?”

It also seems to state the poet’s aspiration, to be freed from generation, to be freed from this mother.

He then turns to the manner in which life is continued in this world:

The sexes sprung from shame & pride

Blow’d [blossomed] in the morn: in evening died;

But mercy changed death into sleep;

The sexes rose to work & weep.

This poem was added in the latter versions of his poems, Songs of Experience, and seems to have been written around 1805. But the collection also contains poems such as The Garden of Love (1794) which contend that shame and sexual repression are the result of the “Chapel” whose doors were shut and the words “Thou shalt not” were written over the door. 

Here the shame seems to be something inherent in the fact of mortality and the body.  Is Blake now arguing that sexual shame is not the result of societal norms and oppressive morality, but rather something inherent in birth and death of the body? Was it shame and pride which gave rise to this problem prior to the body?

Thou, Mother of my Mortal part,

With cruelty didst mould my heart

And with false self-deceiving tears

Didst bind my nostrils, eyes & ears.

This stanza echoes the poem The Tyger, also from the same collection and also from 1794. The poet meditates upon the dangerous tiger, who is quite dangerous (“the fearful symmetry”). 

This dangerous beast is blamed upon God

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the lamb make thee? 

[The lamb is addressed in a poem from Songs of Innocence.]

In that poem, Blake asks

And what shoulder & what art

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

In Tirzah, Blake blames the heart upon the earth – the physical part. Is God from Tyger the equivalent of mother in Tirzah? Is his heart cruel like the tigers, or is it merely the product of another’s cruelty? Does his heart give rise to the outrages elsewhere discussed in Songs of Experience?

This discussion of the senses in Tirzah also sits uneasily with Blake’s longer work, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

In that poem, Blake praises physical desire as “energy” and writes such “Proverbs of Hell” as 

The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.

This mortal body of energy is now the moulder of cruelty and death. Does he celebrate the energy of the body, or does he see it as destructive?

And finally

[Thou mother]

Didst close my tongue in useless clay

And me to mortal life betray

The death of Jesus set me free

Then what have I to do with thee?

Jesus, in a Gnostic vein, is used as a trope to argue for an utter freedom from the “useless clay” of the body. How exactly Jesus’ death performs this feat is not clearly stated.

The question then becomes, does this poem reflect a change in Blake’s thinking (it would not be accurate to say that his earlier position was purely a sex-drugs-rock-n-roll ethos, but it was certainly not conventional middle class anachronistically called Victorian piety)? Blake constantly writes with great irony. His poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell seeks a new negotiation of the body and soul along his idiosyncratic lines. 

But in this poem, one could read it as a movement beyond his earlier position (which was written during the early days of the French Revolution) to more escapist, Gnostic vision — complete with the common aspect of Gnostic asceticism due to its distrust of the body.

And one final question, should the context of Blake’s personal life be used to answer the question of what Blake means by this poem?

Robert Frost, A Patch of Old Snow

16 Thursday Jul 2020

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Robert Frost is a deceptive poet. His poems seem obvious and simplistic – at first blush and certainly when compared a contemporary like T.S. Eliot. But the simplicity is a trick. In this way he reminds me of St. John as opposed to St. Paul. St. John writes seeming simplicity and candor, but the sheer apparent simplicity is the means of the depth. 

To take another comparison: Shakespeare last play, The Tempest is seemingly the simplest of all his plays (except perhaps his early comedies) and yet it child like simplicity conceals its depth. Here is a seeming simple poem 

There’s a patch of old snow in a corner

That should I have guessed

Was a blow-away paper the rain

Had brought to rest.

It is speckled with grime as if 

Small print overspread it,

The news of a day I’ve forgotten—

If I ever read it.

There is a sense in the world is invisible to us. We fill in spaces, create meaning, ignore this or that. It is not that pure blank fills our mind, it is that a re-construction, a distortion or domestication takes up our mind. Thus, we see things and yet don’t. 

This poem is an invitation in the moment where something invisible becomes visible for a moment. At first read, the poem is remarkably simple: Frost notices something in a corner. It is a scrap of snow, but it really looks like some crumbled newspaper. 

But as we consider the poem there is a bit more. He didn’t actually mistake the snow for a newspaper: Rather, there seems to be a missing step in the thought: if I had not noticed it was snow, I probably would have thought it was just a newspaper. 

But there is yet another twist: Rather than merely mistaking the snow as if it were old newspaper, his contemplation actually turns the snow into newspaper:

It is speckled with grime as if 

Small print overspread it,

Thus, it is not that he mistook the snow for newspaper and then realized it was snow. Rather, he saw it was snow and then by the power of imagination transformed it into newspaper. 

So rather than being a snow which has mistaken for a newspaper and so passed by without consideration, the snow has become a newspaper in the fact of his consideration:

The news of a day I’ve forgotten

The grime in the snow is the recordation of some day. And now we come to the twist of the knife, the thing that was missed:

If I ever read it.

Thus, the patch of snow is a newspaper of some day that Frost may have actually missed. There was something which is passed, which he did not see. This patch of snow is a newspaper from that day. This also brings up another point: a thing is not comprehensible, really, until it is turned into words. You listen to music or see and painting – but to communicate what has happened, you must turn that event into words. You don’t hum the symphony, you speak of it. You don’t repaint the painting, you explain it. 

And this brings us to one more consideration here: the poem itself. 

The poet seems snow and thinks of a newspaper – a written record — from a day he had missed. He then turns that event into a written record of human words and brings us into his moment. I, by reading the poem and thinking along with him, am looking – by means of his words – at the snow, which is itself a kind of record something missed. And now, Frost’s missed day becomes my missed day.