Reading (and Transforming) Biblical Sources
“For now we see through a glasse, darkely: but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know euen as also I am knowen,” reads 1 Corinthians 13:12. What, exactly, does this biblical verse mean? As the headnote to the amplified edition notes, “The Perfection of Patience and Knowledge” is an extended gloss on 1 Corinthians 13:12. Pulter is in excellent company in her poetic exploration of this verse, as well as 1 Corinthians 13 as a whole; see the curation for this poem entitled The Knowledge of God for more such poems that respond to this verse. Below is all of 1 Corinthians 13, for full context of the chapter to which this poem responds (as 1 Corinthians 13:12 is the culmination of an argument made in all of 1 Corinthians 13).
- 1 Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and haue not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal.
- 2 And though I haue the gift of prophesie, and vnderstand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I haue all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and haue no charitie, I am nothing.
- 3 And though I bestowe all my goods to feede the poore, and though I giue my body to bee burned, and haue not charitie, it profiteth me nothing.
- 4 Charitie suffereth long, and is kinde: charitie enuieth not: charitie vaunteth not it selfe, is not puffed vp,
- 5 Doeth not behaue it selfe vnseemly, seeketh not her owne, is not easily prouoked, thinketh no euill,
- 6 Reioyceth not in iniquitie, but reioyceth in the trueth:
- 7 Beareth all things, beleeueth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
- 8 Charitie neuer faileth: but whether there be prophesies, they shall faile; whether there bee tongues, they shall cease; whether there bee knowledge, it shall vanish away.
- 9 For we know in part, and we prophesie in part.
- 10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part, shalbe done away.
- 11 When I was a childe, I spake as a childe, I vnderstood as a childe, I thought as a childe: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
- 12 For now we see through a glasse, darkely: but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know euen as also I am knowen.
- 13 And now abideth faith, hope, charitie, these three, but the greatest of these is charitie.
Where the King James Bible translates “charity,” modern translations often give, instead, “love.” How might it change our reading of Pulter’s poem if we believe that love is crucial to the knowledge of 1 Corinthians 13:12? Is “The Perfection of Patience and Knowledge” a love poem in disguise?
How exactly you understand Pulter to be transforming the biblical verse with which the poem ends depends on how you understand the poem’s different parts to fit together. My three other curations for this poem each track, roughly, to each of the poem’s three different sections: the curation “Body, Soul, Dust” connects Pulter’s poem to other seventeenth-century poems that think about the relationship between the soul and (sometimes crumbling) body; ‘Scientific’ Poetry situates her poem among other seemingly scientific poetry in the period, and “The Knowledge of God” provides examples of other poets dwelling on the knowledge of God in general, and on 1 Corinthians 13:12 in particular.