The Pulter Project
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Facsimile of manuscript: Photographs provided by University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection
The line is paraphrased rather liberally from the Book of Job 9:23 (“If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent”). Pulter is indebted to George Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in A Paraphrase Upon the Divine Poems (London, 1638), 14-15, which Sandys dedicates to King Charles. The relevant passage from A Paraphrase Upon Job is in the Curation entitled Pulter Reads George Sandys’s Paraphrase Upon Job. Neither the Geneva Bible nor the King James Bible (KJB)—which is the “Authorized Version” for readers of the time—provides the translation or paraphrase of Job 9:23 that Pulter uses for the opening line of Poem 64. And neither Stefan Christian nor Alice Eardley mentions Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in their editions of Pulter’s poems (for Eardley, see Lady Hester Pulter: Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, ed. Alice Eardley [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014]).
Many of the themes and figures used by Sandys in his paraphrase (or what we might call an amplified edition) of Job appear in Pulter’s present poem, which reflects on providence and divine judgement. However, by virtue of rendering “And with his Sword the controverse decides” into a rhetorical question, Pulter is re-paraphrasing Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job. That Pulter is generally fascinated by Job is apparent as well in Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty [Poem 13], in which she describes Charles: “Then let our Job-like saint rise from the ground / For piety and patience so renowned / That for the best of kings he may be crowned” (Elemental Edition, lines 13-15).
See KJB Genesis 11:6: “And the LORD said, Behold, … this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
Pulter’s Mighty Nimrod (Emblem 1) [Poem 67] is replete with references to the delusions and folly of the builders “Foolishly dreaming” (l. 9). Verses 19-20 in the manuscript read “Let their Accursed plots prove their delusion / For Fance’d Glory let them find confusion.”
Pulter would have known Geffrey Whitney’s emblem “Veritas temporis filia,” in which truth is personified as father Time’s “daughter deare” (Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, and Other Devises [Leiden, 1586], 4, line 4). See the Curation Pulter Reads Whitney’s Emblemes. Whitney’s very popular Choice of Emblemes is a highly likely candidate for inclusion among Pulter’s library holdings. In “And Must the Sword,” Pulter’s speaker assumes the role of Truth (aligned with the “Poles of Truth”) who writes and transports the king into truth’s orbit. The poet thus “pen[s] his story” and immortalizes him, as she did in On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27] (1649-1651), in which his own “valor fills with wonder future story, / Whilst virtue crowns him with immortal glory” (elemental edition, lines 3-4). To eulogize Charles I, Pulter picks up the thread (the poem’s theme or storyline), which is connected to the thread of grace or divine favor.
Sandys assigns the job of settling the controversy not to the sword but to justice: “By Equitie let us our Judgements guide: / And this long controverted Cause decide” (A Paraphrase Upon Job, p. 44). In and through verses that plead for justice and the righteous restoration of kingship, Pulter implies that Truth, penned by the poet and identified as the poet, will restore order, and thus reverse the confusion of tongues and the babble. The term “truth” appears twice in the poem directly, once associated with the king’s movements and then with divine truth that envelops the king’s people who live, move, and have their being in him. But it is also inferred by the reference to Time’s Daughter who uses verses to forge the identifications between truths.
involve means to enfold, envelop, entangle, include (“involve, v.” OED, 1).
Dissolve[d]/involve[d] is perhaps Pulter’s most frequently used rhymed couplet. Select examples of poems in which the couplet appears include On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]; On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27]; The Center [Poem 30]; Aletheia’s Pearl [Poem 32]; The Invocation of the Elements [Poem 41]; and A Dialogue Between Two Sisters [Poem 56]. Most often, the couplet is used in distiches that describe the destruction of the world as a consequence of the eclipsed king: “But if the sun in darkness be involved, / Old nature’s fabric would be soon dissolved” (stanza 2, On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]).The line is paraphrased rather liberally from the Book of Job 9:23 (“If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent”). Pulter is indebted to George Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in A Paraphrase Upon the Divine Poems (London, 1638), 14-15, which Sandys dedicates to King Charles. The relevant passage from A Paraphrase Upon Job is in the Curation entitled Pulter Reads George Sandys’s Paraphrase Upon Job. Neither the Geneva Bible nor the King James Bible (KJB)—which is the “Authorized Version” for readers of the time—provides the translation or paraphrase of Job 9:23 that Pulter uses for the opening line of Poem 64. And neither Stefan Christian nor Alice Eardley mentions Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in their editions of Pulter’s poems (for Eardley, see Lady Hester Pulter: Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, ed. Alice Eardley [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014]).
Many of the themes and figures used by Sandys in his paraphrase (or what we might call an amplified edition) of Job appear in Pulter’s present poem, which reflects on providence and divine judgement. However, by virtue of rendering “And with his Sword the controverse decides” into a rhetorical question, Pulter is re-paraphrasing Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job. That Pulter is generally fascinated by Job is apparent as well in Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty [Poem 13], in which she describes Charles: “Then let our Job-like saint rise from the ground / For piety and patience so renowned / That for the best of kings he may be crowned” (Elemental Edition, lines 13-15).
See KJB Genesis 11:6: “And the LORD said, Behold, … this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
Pulter’s Mighty Nimrod (Emblem 1) [Poem 67] is replete with references to the delusions and folly of the builders “Foolishly dreaming” (l. 9). Verses 19-20 in the manuscript read “Let their Accursed plots prove their delusion / For Fance’d Glory let them find confusion.”
Pulter would have known Geffrey Whitney’s emblem “Veritas temporis filia,” in which truth is personified as father Time’s “daughter deare” (Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, and Other Devises [Leiden, 1586], 4, line 4). See the Curation Pulter Reads Whitney’s Emblemes. Whitney’s very popular Choice of Emblemes is a highly likely candidate for inclusion among Pulter’s library holdings. In “And Must the Sword,” Pulter’s speaker assumes the role of Truth (aligned with the “Poles of Truth”) who writes and transports the king into truth’s orbit. The poet thus “pen[s] his story” and immortalizes him, as she did in On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27] (1649-1651), in which his own “valor fills with wonder future story, / Whilst virtue crowns him with immortal glory” (elemental edition, lines 3-4). To eulogize Charles I, Pulter picks up the thread (the poem’s theme or storyline), which is connected to the thread of grace or divine favor.
Sandys assigns the job of settling the controversy not to the sword but to justice: “By Equitie let us our Judgements guide: / And this long controverted Cause decide” (A Paraphrase Upon Job, p. 44). In and through verses that plead for justice and the righteous restoration of kingship, Pulter implies that Truth, penned by the poet and identified as the poet, will restore order, and thus reverse the confusion of tongues and the babble. The term “truth” appears twice in the poem directly, once associated with the king’s movements and then with divine truth that envelops the king’s people who live, move, and have their being in him. But it is also inferred by the reference to Time’s Daughter who uses verses to forge the identifications between truths.
involve means to enfold, envelop, entangle, include (“involve, v.” OED, 1).
Dissolve[d]/involve[d] is perhaps Pulter’s most frequently used rhymed couplet. Select examples of poems in which the couplet appears include On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]; On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27]; The Center [Poem 30]; Aletheia’s Pearl [Poem 32]; The Invocation of the Elements [Poem 41]; and A Dialogue Between Two Sisters [Poem 56]. Most often, the couplet is used in distiches that describe the destruction of the world as a consequence of the eclipsed king: “But if the sun in darkness be involved, / Old nature’s fabric would be soon dissolved” (stanza 2, On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]).The line is paraphrased rather liberally from the Book of Job 9:23 (“If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent”). Pulter is indebted to George Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in A Paraphrase Upon the Divine Poems (London, 1638), 14-15, which Sandys dedicates to King Charles. The relevant passage from A Paraphrase Upon Job is in the Curation entitled Pulter Reads George Sandys’s Paraphrase Upon Job. Neither the Geneva Bible nor the King James Bible (KJB)—which is the “Authorized Version” for readers of the time—provides the translation or paraphrase of Job 9:23 that Pulter uses for the opening line of Poem 64. And neither Stefan Christian nor Alice Eardley mentions Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in their editions of Pulter’s poems (for Eardley, see Lady Hester Pulter: Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, ed. Alice Eardley [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014]).
Many of the themes and figures used by Sandys in his paraphrase (or what we might call an amplified edition) of Job appear in Pulter’s present poem, which reflects on providence and divine judgement. However, by virtue of rendering “And with his Sword the controverse decides” into a rhetorical question, Pulter is re-paraphrasing Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job. That Pulter is generally fascinated by Job is apparent as well in Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty [Poem 13], in which she describes Charles: “Then let our Job-like saint rise from the ground / For piety and patience so renowned / That for the best of kings he may be crowned” (Elemental Edition, lines 13-15).
See KJB Genesis 11:6: “And the LORD said, Behold, … this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
Pulter’s Mighty Nimrod (Emblem 1) [Poem 67] is replete with references to the delusions and folly of the builders “Foolishly dreaming” (l. 9). Verses 19-20 in the manuscript read “Let their Accursed plots prove their delusion / For Fance’d Glory let them find confusion.”
Pulter would have known Geffrey Whitney’s emblem “Veritas temporis filia,” in which truth is personified as father Time’s “daughter deare” (Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, and Other Devises [Leiden, 1586], 4, line 4). See the Curation Pulter Reads Whitney’s Emblemes. Whitney’s very popular Choice of Emblemes is a highly likely candidate for inclusion among Pulter’s library holdings. In “And Must the Sword,” Pulter’s speaker assumes the role of Truth (aligned with the “Poles of Truth”) who writes and transports the king into truth’s orbit. The poet thus “pen[s] his story” and immortalizes him, as she did in On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27] (1649-1651), in which his own “valor fills with wonder future story, / Whilst virtue crowns him with immortal glory” (elemental edition, lines 3-4). To eulogize Charles I, Pulter picks up the thread (the poem’s theme or storyline), which is connected to the thread of grace or divine favor.
Sandys assigns the job of settling the controversy not to the sword but to justice: “By Equitie let us our Judgements guide: / And this long controverted Cause decide” (A Paraphrase Upon Job, p. 44). In and through verses that plead for justice and the righteous restoration of kingship, Pulter implies that Truth, penned by the poet and identified as the poet, will restore order, and thus reverse the confusion of tongues and the babble. The term “truth” appears twice in the poem directly, once associated with the king’s movements and then with divine truth that envelops the king’s people who live, move, and have their being in him. But it is also inferred by the reference to Time’s Daughter who uses verses to forge the identifications between truths.
involve means to enfold, envelop, entangle, include (“involve, v.” OED, 1).
Dissolve[d]/involve[d] is perhaps Pulter’s most frequently used rhymed couplet. Select examples of poems in which the couplet appears include On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]; On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27]; The Center [Poem 30]; Aletheia’s Pearl [Poem 32]; The Invocation of the Elements [Poem 41]; and A Dialogue Between Two Sisters [Poem 56]. Most often, the couplet is used in distiches that describe the destruction of the world as a consequence of the eclipsed king: “But if the sun in darkness be involved, / Old nature’s fabric would be soon dissolved” (stanza 2, On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]).The line is paraphrased rather liberally from the Book of Job 9:23 (“If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent”). Pulter is indebted to George Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in A Paraphrase Upon the Divine Poems (London, 1638), 14-15, which Sandys dedicates to King Charles. The relevant passage from A Paraphrase Upon Job is in the Curation entitled Pulter Reads George Sandys’s Paraphrase Upon Job. Neither the Geneva Bible nor the King James Bible (KJB)—which is the “Authorized Version” for readers of the time—provides the translation or paraphrase of Job 9:23 that Pulter uses for the opening line of Poem 64. And neither Stefan Christian nor Alice Eardley mentions Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in their editions of Pulter’s poems (for Eardley, see Lady Hester Pulter: Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, ed. Alice Eardley [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014]).
Many of the themes and figures used by Sandys in his paraphrase (or what we might call an amplified edition) of Job appear in Pulter’s present poem, which reflects on providence and divine judgement. However, by virtue of rendering “And with his Sword the controverse decides” into a rhetorical question, Pulter is re-paraphrasing Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job. That Pulter is generally fascinated by Job is apparent as well in Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty [Poem 13], in which she describes Charles: “Then let our Job-like saint rise from the ground / For piety and patience so renowned / That for the best of kings he may be crowned” (Elemental Edition, lines 13-15).
See KJB Genesis 11:6: “And the LORD said, Behold, … this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
Pulter’s Mighty Nimrod (Emblem 1) [Poem 67] is replete with references to the delusions and folly of the builders “Foolishly dreaming” (l. 9). Verses 19-20 in the manuscript read “Let their Accursed plots prove their delusion / For Fance’d Glory let them find confusion.”
Pulter would have known Geffrey Whitney’s emblem “Veritas temporis filia,” in which truth is personified as father Time’s “daughter deare” (Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, and Other Devises [Leiden, 1586], 4, line 4). See the Curation Pulter Reads Whitney’s Emblemes. Whitney’s very popular Choice of Emblemes is a highly likely candidate for inclusion among Pulter’s library holdings. In “And Must the Sword,” Pulter’s speaker assumes the role of Truth (aligned with the “Poles of Truth”) who writes and transports the king into truth’s orbit. The poet thus “pen[s] his story” and immortalizes him, as she did in On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27] (1649-1651), in which his own “valor fills with wonder future story, / Whilst virtue crowns him with immortal glory” (elemental edition, lines 3-4). To eulogize Charles I, Pulter picks up the thread (the poem’s theme or storyline), which is connected to the thread of grace or divine favor.
Sandys assigns the job of settling the controversy not to the sword but to justice: “By Equitie let us our Judgements guide: / And this long controverted Cause decide” (A Paraphrase Upon Job, p. 44). In and through verses that plead for justice and the righteous restoration of kingship, Pulter implies that Truth, penned by the poet and identified as the poet, will restore order, and thus reverse the confusion of tongues and the babble. The term “truth” appears twice in the poem directly, once associated with the king’s movements and then with divine truth that envelops the king’s people who live, move, and have their being in him. But it is also inferred by the reference to Time’s Daughter who uses verses to forge the identifications between truths.
involve means to enfold, envelop, entangle, include (“involve, v.” OED, 1).
Dissolve[d]/involve[d] is perhaps Pulter’s most frequently used rhymed couplet. Select examples of poems in which the couplet appears include On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]; On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27]; The Center [Poem 30]; Aletheia’s Pearl [Poem 32]; The Invocation of the Elements [Poem 41]; and A Dialogue Between Two Sisters [Poem 56]. Most often, the couplet is used in distiches that describe the destruction of the world as a consequence of the eclipsed king: “But if the sun in darkness be involved, / Old nature’s fabric would be soon dissolved” (stanza 2, On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]).The line is paraphrased rather liberally from the Book of Job 9:23 (“If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent”). Pulter is indebted to George Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in A Paraphrase Upon the Divine Poems (London, 1638), 14-15, which Sandys dedicates to King Charles. The relevant passage from A Paraphrase Upon Job is in the Curation entitled Pulter Reads George Sandys’s Paraphrase Upon Job. Neither the Geneva Bible nor the King James Bible (KJB)—which is the “Authorized Version” for readers of the time—provides the translation or paraphrase of Job 9:23 that Pulter uses for the opening line of Poem 64. And neither Stefan Christian nor Alice Eardley mentions Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job in their editions of Pulter’s poems (for Eardley, see Lady Hester Pulter: Poems, Emblems, and The Unfortunate Florinda, ed. Alice Eardley [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014]).
Many of the themes and figures used by Sandys in his paraphrase (or what we might call an amplified edition) of Job appear in Pulter’s present poem, which reflects on providence and divine judgement. However, by virtue of rendering “And with his Sword the controverse decides” into a rhetorical question, Pulter is re-paraphrasing Sandys’s A Paraphrase Upon Job. That Pulter is generally fascinated by Job is apparent as well in Upon the Imprisonment of his Sacred Majesty [Poem 13], in which she describes Charles: “Then let our Job-like saint rise from the ground / For piety and patience so renowned / That for the best of kings he may be crowned” (Elemental Edition, lines 13-15).
See KJB Genesis 11:6: “And the LORD said, Behold, … this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
Pulter’s Mighty Nimrod (Emblem 1) [Poem 67] is replete with references to the delusions and folly of the builders “Foolishly dreaming” (l. 9). Verses 19-20 in the manuscript read “Let their Accursed plots prove their delusion / For Fance’d Glory let them find confusion.”
Pulter would have known Geffrey Whitney’s emblem “Veritas temporis filia,” in which truth is personified as father Time’s “daughter deare” (Whitney, A Choice of Emblemes, and Other Devises [Leiden, 1586], 4, line 4). See the Curation Pulter Reads Whitney’s Emblemes. Whitney’s very popular Choice of Emblemes is a highly likely candidate for inclusion among Pulter’s library holdings. In “And Must the Sword,” Pulter’s speaker assumes the role of Truth (aligned with the “Poles of Truth”) who writes and transports the king into truth’s orbit. The poet thus “pen[s] his story” and immortalizes him, as she did in On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27] (1649-1651), in which his own “valor fills with wonder future story, / Whilst virtue crowns him with immortal glory” (elemental edition, lines 3-4). To eulogize Charles I, Pulter picks up the thread (the poem’s theme or storyline), which is connected to the thread of grace or divine favor.
Sandys assigns the job of settling the controversy not to the sword but to justice: “By Equitie let us our Judgements guide: / And this long controverted Cause decide” (A Paraphrase Upon Job, p. 44). In and through verses that plead for justice and the righteous restoration of kingship, Pulter implies that Truth, penned by the poet and identified as the poet, will restore order, and thus reverse the confusion of tongues and the babble. The term “truth” appears twice in the poem directly, once associated with the king’s movements and then with divine truth that envelops the king’s people who live, move, and have their being in him. But it is also inferred by the reference to Time’s Daughter who uses verses to forge the identifications between truths.
involve means to enfold, envelop, entangle, include (“involve, v.” OED, 1).
Dissolve[d]/involve[d] is perhaps Pulter’s most frequently used rhymed couplet. Select examples of poems in which the couplet appears include On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]; On the King’s Most Excellent Majesty [Poem 27]; The Center [Poem 30]; Aletheia’s Pearl [Poem 32]; The Invocation of the Elements [Poem 41]; and A Dialogue Between Two Sisters [Poem 56]. Most often, the couplet is used in distiches that describe the destruction of the world as a consequence of the eclipsed king: “But if the sun in darkness be involved, / Old nature’s fabric would be soon dissolved” (stanza 2, On that Unparalleled Prince Charles the First, His Horrid Murder [Poem 8]).