Pilgrimage
Life on earth is described as “my few and evil days” in “Made when my Spirits were Sunk Very Low” (Poem 66), echoing Genesis 47:9, in which life is described as a pilgrimage.
Genesis 47:9
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.
Pulter uses the common devotional trope of life as a pilgrimage in several other of her poems:
(“The Revolution” (Poem 16), lines 2-3)
("Made When I Was Sick, 1647" (Poem 31), lines 10-11)
(“The Wish” (Poem 52), lines 7-8).
The trope of life as a pilgrimage is a common one in seventeenth-century devotional poetry, as the following poems and extracts illustrate.
- O Pilgrime pure quhat mervell* tho thou murne
- Thy deirest spous hes now forsaikin thee
- Tho thou intreat yit will he not returne
- The more thou murnis the faster doth he flie
- Thow plungit, art into perplexitie
- most lyke ane wofull wedow* left alone
- Thow seimis to live yit dois thow daylie die
- Quhat* hope of helth since inward joy is gone
- O hardnit* hairt live still in peirles* paine
- and vaill* for wo till he returne again
- O Loyall love quhy linger I so long
- O faithfull freind art thow becum my fo
- In siching* sore now chainged is my song
- my greivous grones ar hard quhair evir* I go
- Wilt thow foirsaik thy simple servand so
- that hes so oft thy favour felt befoir
- O hardnit hairt will thow not burst in two
- Och will thy wraith be kendled* evirmore
- O siching saull live &c
- I travell’d on, seeing the hill, where lay
- My expectation.
- A long it was and weary way.
- The gloomy cave of Desperation
- I left on th’one, and on the other side
- The rock of Pride.
- And so I came to Phansies medow strow’d
- With many a flower:
- Fair would I here have made abode,
- But I was quicken’d by my houre.
- So to Cares cops I came, and there got through
- With much ado.
- That led me to the wilde of Passion, which
- Some call the wold;*
- A wasted place, but sometimes rich.
- Here I was robb’d of all my gold,
- Save one good Angell,* which a friend had ti’d
- Close to my side.
- At length I got unto the gladsome hill,
- Where lay my hope,
- Where lay my heart; and climbing still,
- When I had gain’d the brow and top,
- A lake of brackish waters on the ground
- Was all I found.
- With that abash’d and struck with many a sting
- Of swarming fears,
- I fell, and cry’d, Alas my King;
- Can both the way and end be tears?
- Yet taking heart I rose, and then perceiv’d
- I was deceiv’d:
- My hill was further: so I flung away,
- Yet heard a crie
- Just as I went, None goes that way
- And lives: If that be all, said I,
- After so foul a journey death is fair,
- And but a chair.*
This poem also illustrates other common devotional themes shared with Pulter’s Poem 66 including that of the body as “clay,” and that of a desire to “take flight” towards the divine.
- I am a pilgrim, that’s my case
- Whilst in the world I stay
- Having no ceirtain, dwelling plase
- But in a tent of clay
- Whilst I am in the world, I grone
- I take no true content
- I’le never that it for my home
- But look upon’t as lent
- I am a stranger, in this world
- The world, seems strang to me
- Lord, hast to take a stranger home
- Who is well known, to thee
- This world to me’s a borow’d Inne
- I Lodg here, for a night
- And in the morning, I am gone
- Fain. I would take my flight
- Tis night with me, whilst I am here
- I long, for break of day
- That when the light, ’gins to appear
- I may be gone away