Wings

A common devotional trope evoked in Pulter’s poem is that of wings by which the soul will ascend towards the divine. Pulter uses the image in that way in Must I Thus Ever Interdicted Be55:

Hester Pulter
Must I Thus Ever Interdicted Be

Oh let thy spirit my sad soul sustain
Until those comforts I do reattain,
Then let me never part with them again

Until my captivated soul takes wing,
Then will I hallelujahs ever sing
To thee, my gracious God and glorious king.

Hester Pulter, “Must I Thus Ever Interdicted Be,” Women Poets of the English Civil Wars, Sarah C. E. Ross and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (eds), (Manchester UP, 2017), p. 131, ll. 13-18.

Elizabeth Melville also provides an illustrative example in Ane Godlie Dreame. These lines, like Pulter’s “Made When My Spirits Were Sunk Very Low”, also refer to the body in terms of clay.

Elizabeth Melville, Ane Godlie Dreame

Quhat can wee do? Wee cloggit ar with sin.
In filthie vyce our sensles saules ar drownit:
Thocht wee resolve wee nevir can begin
To men our lyfes, bot sin does still abound.
Quhen will thou cum? quhen sall thy trumpet sound?
Quhen sall wee sie that grit and glorious day?
O save us Lord, out of this pit profound,
And reif us from this loathsum lump of clay.
Thou knawis our hearts, thou sies our hail desire,
Our secret thochts thay ar not hid fra thee:
Thocht wee offend, thou knawis we stranglie tyre
To beir this wecht, our spreit wald faine be free.
Allace, O Lord, quahat pleasour can it be
To leif ion sinne that sair dois presse us downe:
Oh give us wings that wee aloft may flie,
And end the fecht that wee may weir the crowne.

Elizabeth Melville, Ane Godlie Dreame (1603); from Jamie Reid-Baxter (ed.),, Poems of Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross (Edinburgh: Solsequium, 2010), p. 76, lines 57-72.

Julia Palmer, Mixt Desires

Thou sitst between the Cherubims
Surounded with the Seraphims
Ther angels see thy face
Oh that I had the wings of love
Then would I flee, to god above
Be’ing filled with thy grace.

Julia Palmer, “Mixt Desires”, The ‘Centuries’ of Julia Palmer, ed. Victoria Burke and Elizabeth Clarke (Nottingham: Trent Editions, 2001), p. 7, ll. 1-6.

The most famous devotional poem to use the imagery of wings is George Herbert’s “Easter-Wings”:

George Herbert, Easter-Wings

LORD, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poor:

With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne:
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.

With thee
Let me combine,
And feel this day thy victorie,
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

George Herbert, “Easter-Wings”, via Luminarium.org [accessed 17 May 2018]