Sixth & Seventh Stanzas

How spiritual? Holy shall I shine when I

Thy Crown of Righteousness wear on my head?

How glorious when does thou dost me glorify

To wear thy Crown of Glory polished?

How shall I when thy Crown of Life I wear                           35

In lively colors flowerish, fresh, and fair.

When thou shalt crown me with these crowns, I’ll bend

My shallow crown to crown with songs thy name.

Angels shall set the tune; I’ll it attend:

Thy glory’st be the burden of the same.                                            40

Till then I cannot sing, my tongue is tied.

Accept this lisp till I am glorified.

Notes

The poem ends with meditation and expectation as to coming to glory:

²⁸ And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. ²⁹ For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰ And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Romans 8:28–30 (ESV)

The Crowns are emblems of the various graces of heaven: life, glory, righteousness. The previous stanza ends with the prayer that he may receive the crown of life, that it eternal life, and in so receiving it, sin will.  As an aside, it is interesting that fear of sin is linked to the slavery to sin; and so also the hope of life is linked to the cessation of sin:

¹⁴ Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, ¹⁵ and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Hebrews 2:14–15 (ESV)

Notice also that holiness is linked to radiance, or being glory:

                                    Holy shall I shine when I

Thy Crown of Righteousness wear on my head?

How glorious when does thou dost me glorify

In contemporary idiom, holiness is linked with a narrowness, an aversion to life and happiness, the stringent “church lady” of the skit. But Taylor conceptualizes holiness as a fundamentally different thing: It is not narrow and cold, but “glorious” to be righteous.

But notice that this state of being “spiritual” is not senseless. He describes this with physical terms of a Spring:

How shall I when thy Crown of Life I wear                           35

In lively colors flowerish, fresh, and fair.

This last line has a fine alliteration on “f”.

The reference to “flowerish” may be an allusion to 1 Peter 1:4, quoted above. The word for “unfading” ἀμάραντος (amarantos) means a never-fading flower:

ἀμάραντος [α^μα^], ον, （μαραίνω) 

A.unfading, “λειμών”  Luc.Dom.9: metaph., “σοφία”  LXX Wi.6.12; “κληρονομία”  1 Ep.Pet.1.4, cf. CIG2942c(Tralles); πνεῦμα prob. in IPE2.286 (Panticapaeum): neut. pl. as Adv., Philostr.Im.1.9. 

II. Subst. ἀμάραντον, τό (but in Lat. amarantus), never-fading flower, IG14.607e (Carales), Poll.1.229; = ἑλίχρυσον, Dsc.4.57; = κενταύρειον μικρόν, Ps.-Dsc.3.7; = χρυσοκόμη. Id.4.55.

LSJ.

(Amaranthus, courtesy of Candiru)

More on line 35:

How shall I when thy Crown of Life I wear

There is an ellipsis of “shine” taken from line 31, “Holy shall I shine”.  In line 25 the main verb is missing form “How shall I ____” Thus, “how shall I shine.” The ellipsis is necessary to limit the line to 10 syllables.

Lines 37-38 have a clever bit of punning on “crown”

When thou shalt crown me with these crowns, I’ll bend

My shallow crown to crown with songs thy name.

When you place [crow] upon my head these “crowns”, I’ll bend my head [crown] in a bow to you, and I will praise [crown] your name with song.  

This worship of song will include the angels:

Angels shall set the tune; I’ll it attend:

Thy glory’st be the burden of the same

The burden here cannot be mean a negative weight. Therefore, he must mean the word in a neutral sense, “a great weight”. There is a pun in that: the Hebrew word for “glory” means at base “heavy”, and thus reputation and wealth:

  A. non-theological.

  —1. heaviness, burden Is 22:24 Nah 2:10 (? anticipatory לִכְדוּ לָכֶם, alt. cj. כְּבֵדִים).

  —2. a) riches Gn 31:1 (עשׂה to gain) Is 10:3 61:6 66:12; b) reputation, importance Gn 45:13 Qoh 10:1 (Herzberg 183; alt. honour)

Koehler, Ludwig, et al. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Electronic ed., E.J. Brill, 1994–2000, p. 457. And so “glory” is a burden because it is weighty (“gravitas” is an analogical usage)

As is common throughout these poems, the poem ends with a self-reference. Here, Taylor says his poem is not enough to be a “song”: he is unable to sign. He refers to his poem as a “lisp”, which would be the way a child speaks.  His “tongue is tied”:

Till then I cannot sing, my tongue is tied.

Accept this lisp till I am glorified.

There is possibly an allusion here to Calvin’s reference that God must lisp to us, speak to us like children, because we cannot understand better:

For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us? Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity. To do this he must descend far beneath his loftiness. Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion & 2. Edited by John T. McNeill, Translated by Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, Westminster John Knox

Fifth Stanza

A crown of life, of glory, of righteousness,                                 25

Thou wilt adorn with that will not fade.

Shall faith in me shrink up for feebleness?

Nor take my sins by the crown, till crownless made?

Breathe, Lord, thy Spirit on my Faith, that I

May have thy crown of life, and sin may die.                           30

Notes:

A crown of life, of glory, of righteousness,

Thou wilt adorn with that will not fade.

These lines make rapid allusions to various NT texts:

A crown of life comes from James 1:12, quoted above.

1 Peter 5:4 (ESV)

⁴ And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

1 Peter 1:3–7 (ESV)

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, ⁷ so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

2 Timothy 4:8 (ESV)

⁸ Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

Taylor is right to take this as a collective crown; the image should not be of one wearing multiple crowns stacked one upon another.  By “crown” the idea is that one is adorned in this way. Each element is responsive to an effect of sin and the fall.

A crown of life answers to death, which is the wage for sin (Rom. 6:23)

A crown of glory answers to the shame of sin.

A crown of righteousness answer to the guilt of sin.

All things in creation are subjected to futility (Rom. 8:20). The rewards of God will be unfading.

Notice that the crowns are not given for merit, but are given because the one who receives these crowns lacks this honor.  However, these crowns are granted upon a condition: not of merit but of faith. Refer back to 1 Peter 1:3-7.

Hence the next line of Taylor’s poem:

Shall faith in me shrink up for feebleness?

These crowns are conditional upon the existence of faith to receive them. These crowns are available to all on the condition of faith, but will my faith fail? Is my faith so feeble (as evidenced by my persistent sin) that it will be unable to lay hold upon these crowns which I so desperately need?

Here we have a pun upon the word “crown”: The top of the head, and the adornment of a king:

Nor take my sins by the crown, till crownless made?

Will I not take my sins by their head, to dispose of them, until I have lost the crown of life/glory/righteousness?  Or by crownless, does he mean he will be deposed? Dead, lost his head? Will never finally deal with sin until it comes to past that I have lost all?

Breathe, Lord, thy Spirit on my Faith, that I

May have thy crown of life, and sin may die.

I made an emendation here. I have two published versions of Taylor’s poems, and both record the first word of the 29^th line as “breath”. But Taylor is unquestionably alluding to the act of Jesus after his resurrection as recorded in John:

John 20:21–22 (ESV)

²¹ Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” ²² And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

In himself, Taylor sees only the fear that his own faith will fail. And thus he prays that Jesus will breathe upon him and grant him the faith so that he may obtain the crown. Thus, the condition for the gift and the gift itself are both from the Lord.

Again, the crown is not a reward for a sinless life. Rather, the crown is given as victory over the sin:  By gaining the crown he will live.

Third Stanza

Pardon and poison them, Lord, with thy blood

Cast their cursed carcasses out of my heart.

My heart fill with thy love, let grace it dub.                                                                  15

Make this my silver studs with thy rich art.

My soul shall then be thy sweet paradise

Thou’st be its rose, and it thy bed of spice.

Notes:

If the Lord should cleanse his heart, his would be a fit place for the Lord.

He again uses the initial accent to drive home the point. This use of the accent makes the plea more intensive. He furthers that intensity with alliteration on the accented syllables:

PARdon and POIison them, Lord, with thy blood

CAST their CURSED CARcasses out of my heart.

The paired “pardon and poison” is an interesting phrase because both words are appropriate to the prayer: He is asking the Lord to (1) forgive him for harboring sin, and (2) destroy the sin in his heart. Thus, pardon and poison are both appropriate. But, this is the only time I have ever seen these two words paired. A check of google n-gram reports no usage of this phrase.

The blood of Christ was shed for the forgiveness of sins. The ninth chapter of Hebrews discusses this doctrine at length. But how does the blood poison sin?  There is a line, I believe it is in Barth’s commentary on Romans, 6^th chapter, that grace pulls up sin by the roots.  Pardon for sin is not merely a forgiveness, but a transformation. (Incidentally, this leads us to one of the great controversial issues in Christian theology: What is the precise relationship between forgiveness and transformation, positional and progressive sanctification?)

The act of being reconciled is inconsistent with sin, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” Rom. 6:2

The sin having been poisoned would thus be dead and the soldiers now carcasses:

CAST their CURSED CARcasses out of my heart.

I take cursed carcasses to be an allusion to Hebrews 3, which recounts in part the death of the rebellious Israelites following the exodus from Egypt. Those who rebelled were cursed, they were not permitted to enter the promised land and their bodies, carcasses in the Authorize Version used by Taylor, were left outside of the promised land:

¹⁴ For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; ¹⁵ While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. ¹⁶ For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. ¹⁷ But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? ¹⁹ So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Hebrews 3:14–19 (KJV)

He prays that his heart being cleansed of sin may then be properly adorned. It is a space being cleaned and then filled with something better:

My heart fill with thy love, let grace it dub.                                                                  15

Make this my silver studs with thy rich art.

His prayer is that his heart be filled with love and grace (grace being the sanctifying influence of the Spirit).  There is a second movement in the prayer: not merely filled but made into a work of art.  This is one of those self-referential moments in Taylor’s poems where the prayer of the poem is in part manifested by the poem. The poem itself is art: although he reference here is more directly visual art.

This two-step: clean then fill probably is an allusion to this statement from Jesus:

Luke 11:24–26 (KJV)

²⁴ When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. ²⁵ And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. ²⁶ Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.

A heart which is cleansed but not filled with something better is in danger. He is praying not merely for forgiveness but for transformation.

His heart being cleansed and made into art will then be a paradise, a garden (paradise means garden):

My soul shall then be thy sweet paradise

Thou’st be its rose, and it thy bed of spice.

Paradise has an interesting reference to heaven:

Luke 23:43 (KJV)

⁴³ And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

But even more to the point of this poem, is the use of the word “paradise” in the passage which is the motto for this poem:

Revelation 2:7–10 (KJV)

⁷ He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

⁸ And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; ⁹ I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan. ¹⁰ Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.

The imagery here comes from the Song of Solomon, which is an intimate love poem often read allegorically:

Song of Solomon 2:1–2 (KJV)

1 I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. 2 As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.

Song of Solomon 6:2 (KJV)

² My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies.

He prays that the Lord be the chief glory of the heart and the heart a fitting place for such a rose.