To
Astraea1

Edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall

Astraea, a classical goddess traditionally associated with justice but linked elsewhere by Pulter to truth, appears here as a beloved young girl or woman in the lap of her mother Aurora (goddess of dawn). While the speaker admires the glimmering beauty of this tableau, she also anxiously anticipates its dissolution and the departure of Astraea, perhaps as the dawn itself dissolves imperceptibly into the full blaze of day. After all, it was with the passing of earthly time through the soft light of the Golden Age into the brazen corruptions of the Bronze that Astraea first, according to legend, fled from where she ruled on earth into the skies, where the speaker now perceives her—so might she not, facing further signs of worldly “fraud,” flee yet farther off? To forestall this possibility, Pulter proposes a less spectacular but more Protestant form of political sanctuary within the temple of her own heart, where this female figure is daringly granted sole dominion—at least until Astraea and Pulter shall both, as the latter confidently anticipates, be elevated to a still greater station.

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Thou, blessed birth of the celestial morn
Whose brighter limbs no gems needs to adorn:
Thou then appear most lovely to our sight
When thou lie naked in the lap of light.
Sweet maid, though thou art of celestial birth,
Leave not (O leave not) this, our orb of Earth.
If fraud usurps, that thou canst find no rest,
Then take thy lodging up in my poor breast.
There thou shalt monarchize2
 and rule alone,
None daring to displace thee from thy throne
Till everlasting glory, joy, and love
Shall us invite to live with them above.