Dear God, Turn Not Away Thy Face

Edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall

This poem modulates between a desperate plea not to be abandoned and a vivid fantasy of becoming a heavenly (if dependent) power, whose glory is imagined as akin to royalty. The speaker’s anguished and repeated cries for God not to turn his face away echo both Christ’s tormented exclamation on the cross (“My God, my God why have thou forsaken me?”) and David’s entreaty in the Psalms (“Hide not thy face far from me; … leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation”). If the divine spirit would possess and illuminate her soul, the speaker would reciprocate by offering earthly hallelujahs (songs of praise, such as this poem). This earthly illumination would also set into motion the “eternal day” of the Christian Judgment Day, when her body—gruesomely imagined as eaten by material elements—might transform into a new physical state wearing new garments. Pulter experiments in the poem formally, offering six four-line stanzas that interconnect in unusual ways: the individual stanzas are comprised of a tetrameter tercet and offset ending trimeter line; and end rhymes structure the poem as three paired stanzas. The result is a verse that demonstrates an intensified bonding and coupling of its parts.

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Dear God, turn not away Thy face1
,
Desert me not, in such a case
As I am in, without thy grace,
Involved2
 with death and night.

O that the spirits of life and love
Would leave His glorious throne above,
And deign3
 on my dark soul to move,
T’illum’nate4
 me with light.

Though I no off’ring fit can bring,
Yet I will hallelujahs sing
To my eternal God and King,
Whilst here I pass my story5
.

And when the el’ments6
 are agreed
On my mortality to feed,
And neither faith nor hope shall need7
,
I’ll shine with love in glory.

O, then turn not Thy face away;
Let love and light bear all the sway.
They’ll soon create eternal day,
O do it but explore8
.

Then shall Thy blesséd influence
Triumph o’er Death, her impotence9
,
Whilst I enrobed with innocence
Am crowned for evermore.