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The Pulter Project
pulterproject.northwestern.edu
Poem 40

My Soul, Why Art Thou Full of Trouble?

Edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
How do you comfort a troubled soul? Here, the answer rests in the promise of a future radical change, in metamorphosis as both a religious and poetic principle. While in neighboring poems, the speaker urges the soul to be patient until the glories of the afterlife, or to freely let go of its earthly body, here she offers reassurance that habitation on earth is merely temporary. The consolation offered is superficially cast in terms of a standard Christian duality of body versus soul. But, in fact, Pulter complicates the matter by warning the soul that its “mortal nature” will corrode to ashes and disintegrate to the fundamental Aristotelian elements. The body and soul emerge less as distinctive entities than fungible elements making up a being. This disruption of Christian orthodoxy continues when the speaker conditionally credits the Pythagorean theory that the soul transmigrates at death into the body of another creature. If Pythagoras is right, she reassures her anxious soul, it surely will evolve into a lamb or dove (Christian icons) rather than a lowly toad. Although the poem ends with the comforting finale in which the soul is swallowed into heaven with amnesia about its earthly existence, the core principle celebrated by the poem is the vitality of transmutation, registered in the poem’s content, in its uncertain shifts between first-and second-person address (which confuse soul and body), and in its formal rhyme words: “Then whether dissolution, / Or transmigration, / Or rolling revolution, / All ends in thy salvation.” The final twist is Pulter’s decision to write in what was known as “poulterer’s measure,” a popular ballad form of writing. The move away from rhymed couplets (to quatrains of alternating tetrameter and trimeter) performs Pulter’s investment in revolutions of form; and her playful use of a form that echoes her own name only highlights the witticism of what seems, at first glance, an orthodox lesson about the vanitas of the earthly realm.
Compare Editions
i
1My soul, why art thou full of trouble
2And overwhelmed with grief?
3Dost thou not know this world’s a bubble
4And cannot yield relief?
5This life’s a dream of mirth or sorrow
6Envelopéd in night;
7The
Resurrection’s1
like the morrow,
8As full of life as light.
9Then slight these
terrene2
hopes, as
toys3
;
10Think thou of better things.
11From all
her4
pleasures and her joys,
12Nought but repentance springs.
13Thy mortal nature ne’er deplore,
14Let Death work all her spite;
15For thou shalt live, when Death’s no more,
16In
everlasting light5
.
17What, though thou into ashes turn,
18Thy dust will find a tomb
19Within some safe and silent urn
20In black Oblivion’s womb.
21Whether thou water dost increase,
22Or
fire, or air, or earth6
;
23Yet am I sure to rest in peace;
24My soul
assumes7
her birth.
25And if
Pythagoras8
saw clear,
26Of this thou mayest resolve:
27Some lamb, or dove, then to appear,
28No toad shall thee
involve9
.
29Then whether
dissolution10
,
30Or transmigration,
31Or rolling revolution,
32All ends in thy salvation.
33Nothing shall then afflict my soul
34That passeth here below;
35For I above the highest
pole11
36Or star
ere12
long shall go.
37Forget I shall, then, my
sad story13
;
38And all my past annoys
39Shall swallowed be
of14
infinite glory
40And
crowned15
with endless joys.
Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.

Elemental Edition,

edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Walli

Editorial Note

The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible.

After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry.

See the full conventions for the elemental edition here.

Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.
  • Leah Knight, Brock University
  • Wendy Wall, Northwestern University
  • Resurrection’s
    in Christianity, the rising to life of all dead people at the Last Judgment, the time when souls rejoin bodies
  • terrene
    earthly
  • toys
    trivial things
  • her
    the Earth’s
  • everlasting light
    Heaven
  • fire, or air, or earth
    in classical tradition, the four constitutive elements of the world and body; here Pulter understands her own death as contributing to the expansion and imbalance of one of these elements
  • assumes
    adopts; receives; takes upon oneself; puts on (a garb, aspect, form, or character)
  • Pythagoras
    Greek philosopher known for his theory of the transmigration of souls at death (the word “transmigration” appears in the next stanza). In this theory, souls could transfer across life forms, from human to animal. Pulter assures her soul that it will not take the low form of a frog, even if Pythagoras is right in principle about transmigration.
  • involve
    entangle, envelop
  • dissolution
    For the meter to be consistent in the first three lines of this stanza, the word “dissolution” as well as “transmigration,” and “revolution” (in the next lines) may have been pronounced each with five syllables (“tion” stretching into two syllables in each).
  • pole
    point of reference in the sky around which stars appear to revolve, or the point at which the earth’s axis meets heavens (derived from Ptolemy)
  • ere
    before
  • sad story
    life, narrative
  • of
    in
  • crowned
    glorified, blessed; adorned with; rewarded. See Revelation 2:10: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
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