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
Beginning and ending with questions, the speaker in this poem grapples emotionally
with the quandary of being both immaterial soul and mortal flesh. What begins as the
speaker’s encouragement to her soul to ambitiously look past the ephemeral pleasures
of the natural and finite world turns, by the end of this verse, into a desperate
longing to be reunited with her loved ones and with God in heaven. Between these two
rhetorical stances, the speaker belies her attraction to the sensual beauty of the
landscape, as if trying to convince herself to disavow the joys she occasionally feels
(“Then what’s this world we keep ado about?”). She also abruptly disrupts her wise
self-counsel to confess a deep fear of death, of transforming into mere dust and ashes.
Pulter’s inventive staging of the conventional Renaissance poetic debate between body
and soul contrasts the transience and filth of the “dunghill earth” with the expansive
flight of the soul into a paradisal heaven vividly imagined as celestial, sovereign
and musical.
Line number 2
Gloss note
move in cycles; move in an unsteady manner; rotate, turn, or pivot around; trust in
God; wallow
Line number 5
Gloss note
Christian deity; see John 8:12: “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the
light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life.”
Line number 10
Gloss note
feather
Line number 12
Gloss note
pile of excrement
Line number 14
Gloss note
convinced
Line number 15
Gloss note
health-giving
Line number 16
Gloss note
rippling
Line number 16
Gloss note
streams
Line number 19
Gloss note
fussing
Line number 24
Gloss note
Seven of Pulter’s children had died by 1655.
Line number 28
Gloss note
unsullied, chaste
Line number 29
Gloss note
places where the Earth’s axes meet the celestial sphere
Line number 30
Gloss note
her children’s desires have been met in heaven
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