Dust
In many of her poems, Pulter is fascinated with the idea and symbolism of dust, from its Biblical connotations as the earth from which Adam was made (and will return), from which John Milton drew in Paradise Lost, to the alchemical notions of dust as purified matter, yet purity which is easily mistaken for the ashes or dregs of the transformation. The Book of Common Prayer, which laid out the forms of worship for the post-Reformation church in England, has Biblically-inflected “dust” in its funeral service. In George Herbert’s poem “Church Monuments” we can see how dust represented both the solidity of matter and its transience in devotional lyric.
Genesis 2:7
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and
man became a living soul.
Genesis 3:19
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Genesis 18:27
And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and
ashes:
Psalm 103:13-15
Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.
For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.
As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
- Let us make now Man in our image, Man
- In our similitude, and let them rule
- Over the Fish and Fowle of Sea and Aire,
- Beast of the Field, and over all the Earth,
- And every creeping thing that creeps the ground.
- This said, he formd thee, Adam, thee O Man
- Dust of the ground, and in thy nostrils breath’d
- The breath of Life; in his own Image hee
- Created thee, in the Image of God
- Express, and thou becam'st a living Soul.
- Male he created thee, but thy consort
- Female for Race; then bless’d Mankinde, and said,
- Be fruitful, multiplie, and fill the Earth,
- Subdue it, and throughout Dominion hold
- Over Fish of the Sea, and Fowle of the Aire,
- And every living thing that moves on the Earth.
- (Book 7, lines 519-34)
The Order for The Burial of the Dead
Then the priest castyng earth vpon the Corps, shall saye.
I Commende thy soule to God the father almigh|tie, and thy body to the grounde, earth to earth, [H] asshes to asshes, dust to dust, in sure and certaine hope of resurreccion to eternall lyfe, through our Lorde Iesus Christe, who shall chaunge oure vile body, that it may be lyke to his gloryous body, according to the mighty workyng wherby he is hable to subdue al thinges to himselfe.
Dust in Devotional Lyric
- While that my soul repairs to her devotion,
- Here I intomb my flesh, that it betimes
- May take acquaintance of this heap of dust;
- To which the blast of death's incessant motion,
- Fed with the exhalation of our crimes,
- Drives all at last. Therefore I gladly trust
- My body to this school, that it may learn
- To spell his elements, and find his birth
- Written in dusty heraldry and lines;
- Which dissolution sure doth best discern,
- Comparing dust with dust, and earth with earth.
- These laugh at jet, and marble put for signs,
- To sever the good fellowship of dust,
- And spoil the meeting. What shall point out them,
- When they shall bow, and kneel, and fall down flat
- To kiss those heaps, which now they have in trust?
- Dear flesh, while I do pray, learn here thy stem
- And true descent: that when thou shalt grow fat,
- And wanton in thy cravings, thou mayst know,
- That flesh is but the glass, which holds the dust
- That measures all our time; which also shall
- Be crumbled into dust. Mark, here below,
- How tame these ashes are, how free from lust,
- That thou mayst fit thyself against thy fall.
Alchemical Dust
Dust: the whitened, purified body of the Stone attained through sublimation, also known as ash, snow, white foliated earth and Bird of Hermes. The Rosary of the Philosophers says of the dust: “when it shall ascend most white as Snow, it will be compleat, therefore gather it carefully, lest it fly away into smoke, because that is the very sought for good, the white foliated Earth.” The Clangor Buccinae advised the alchemist to sublime the body of the Stone and boil it with mercury “until it ascends in likenesse of most white Dust, adhering to the sides of the Vessell in manner of Snow, But the Ashes remaining in the bottome are dregs, and the vilified drosse of Bodies, and to be cast away, in which there is no life because it is a most light Dust, which with a little blast vanisheth.” Arthur Wilson referred to the alchemical dust, meaning “dregs,” in a dedicatory poem to Edward Benlowes: “By sacred Chymistrie, the Spirit must / Ascend and leave the Sediment to Dust.” Aristotle equated the purified body or white dust with the Hermes Bird: “Whiten the Earth, and Sublime it quickly with Fire, until the Spirit which thou shalt finde in it goe forth of it, and it is called Hermes Bird; for that which ascends higher is efficacious purity but that which fals to the bottome, is drosse and corruption. This therefore is Dust drawn from Dust, and the begotten of the Philosophers, the white foliated Earth, in which Gold is to be sowne.”