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 full conventions for this edition here.
Headnote
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 “common 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.Line number 7
Gloss note
in Christianity, the rising to life of all dead people at the Last Judgment, the time when souls rejoin bodiesLine number 9
Gloss note
earthlyLine number 9
Gloss note
trivial thingsLine number 11
Gloss note
the Earth’sLine number 16
Gloss note
HeavenLine number 22
Critical note
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 elementsLine number 24
Gloss note
adopts; receives; takes upon oneself; puts on (a garb, aspect, form, or character)Line number 25
Gloss note
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.Line number 28
Gloss note
entangle, envelopLine number 29
Critical note
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).Line number 35
Gloss note
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)Line number 36
Gloss note
beforeLine number 37
Gloss note
life, narrativeLine number 39
Gloss note
inLine number 40
Critical note
glorified, blessed; adorned with; rewarded. See Revelation 2:10: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” Sorry, but there are no notes associated with
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