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The Pulter Project
pulterproject.northwestern.edu
Poem 44

A Solitary Discourse

Edited by Lara Dodds
In this long, meditative poem, Pulter’s speaker interrogates her own spiritual condition (“my pensive soul”), using the imagery of light and darkness that is so prevalent in her poetry. The poem poses the question: how can I be sad when the natural beauty of the dawn vanquishes the darkness every single day? And, the poem also asks, “what comfort’s in this light / That is alternately pursued by night?” These opposing interpretations of the same situation—light is followed by darkness; darkness is followed by light—are at the center of this poem’s anguished and, finally, hopeful interrogation of its speaker’s spiritual condition. By comparing herself to the personified and anthropomorphized figure of the solsequium, or sunflower, Pulter’s speaker questions whether observation of the natural world can provide a kind of comfort that is analogous to God’s grace.
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i
1How canst thou heavy be now
she1
appears,
2My pensive soul, that with her luster cheers
3All drooping spirits? Lift up thy sad eyes;
4Behold how horrid darkness from her flies.
5Do thou but look how at the sight of day,
6With sable wings she scowling flies away;
7Look how
Aurora with her orient light2
8Doth scorn and trample
melancholy Night3
.
9Nay, pale-faced
Cynthia with her glittering train4
10Hide all away for fear of her disdain.
11But yet (alas) what comfort’s in this light
12That is alternately pursued by night?
13Instead of bringing of my soul relief,
14It doth successively renew my grief.
15There is no cheerful light below the skies,
16Nor can we see till we lose our eyes.
17Did I not hope my soul’s of heavenly birth?
18Let me be nothing if I
debreathe5
on Earth;
19But on condition of eternal glory,
20I am contented with my life’s sad story.
21For shame, my soul, leave this base discontent,
22And cheerly look up to the
firmament6
:
23
See how Aurora sprinkles dewlike pearls7
24On Ceres’ corn gathered by rural girls
25To wash the freckles from their lovely face
26That in their lovers’ eyes they may find grace.
27Alas, what beauty, with such care up-nursed,
28When sickness age and grief (of all the worst)
29Have acted all their parts? Then comes pale Death
30And closes up their eyes and stops their breath;
31How empty and how vain is carnal love
32Compared but with a glimpse of joys above.
33I was in youth a modest virgin bred,
34And brought with honor to my nuptial bed,
35To a most lovely youth, and nobly born;
36Virtue and beauty did his youth adorn.
37Our music then had
sweet and pleasant closes8
;
38Crowned were our heads with
myrtle and with roses9
,
39Which to this hour are flowery, fresh and green,
40Though
cypress buds10
were here and there between
41Stuck in by adverse fate to cool our love;
42Or else that we should place our thoughts above,
43Where only is
true11
love and lasting peace.
44That love shall last when faith and hope shall cease.
45From heaven, my soul, from heaven thy comfort springs;
46For earth (alas) nought but affliction brings.
47Look up once more; here’s that thy heart will ease,
48Or surely nothing will thy fancy please.
49Mark how
Apollo12
, this salubrious morning,
50With dazzling beams his splendent face adorning,
51Comes glittering forth in most refulgent grace,
52Joying to run his
occidental race13
,
53Scorning his eyes should take a slumbering nap
54Until he lays in wanton Thetis’ lap,
55His flagrant head then she in love belaves,
56His burning tresses with her cooler waves;
57And that sweet dew on flowers redolent
58Which breathes to us an aromatic scent,
59He with his heat exhales above our view
60Which doth nocturnally descend in dew.
61See how the
solsequium14
thrusts her head
62Up through the center from that common bed
63Into the liquid azure sea above her
64To follow
Phoebus15
her admired lover.
65When he in our horizon gives his race,
66Then in the air she shows her lovely face;
67So when he is our zenith at midday,
68She at full length her beauty doth display.
69But when the sun is nadir to us here,
70She meets him in the other hemisphere.
71To see these marvels and this shining lamp
72Dazzles mine eyes and doth my spirit damp:
73For when I do his
orient16
splendor see
74It more discovers my deformity.
75If I but look upon his blazing beauty,
76
He burns me black17
for failing so in duty;
77But if in innocence I had stood upright,
78Nor sun nor moon should hurt me day or night.
79But I (ay me) in Adam fell from glory,
80Which makes me live
a life most transitory18
.
81Then those celestial orbs that shine so bright,
82
Should fellows be and further our delight19
.
83Happy should be their influence and dances,
84Both their full-eyed aspects and secret glances.
85Then unto them I should be independent,
86Nor need I fear, though
Saturn’s my ascendant20
.
87But now I’m troubled, ready still to cry,
88’Cause at my birth
some planet looked awry21
,
89Forgetting him that them and me did make,
90Who of his children constant care doth take.
91And those celestial works of wonder,
92He knows their names, natures, and number,
93Their turning and their constant stations,
94And every influence of those constellations.
95In God, my soul, trust ever and depend;
96So shalt thou live a life that ne’er shall end.
97Nor be thou hopeless when thy body’s crumbled,
98And with all creatures in this mass is jumbled;
99But at thy death sing cheerfully a
requiem22
,
100For thou with joy shall like the solsequium
101Meet thy redeemer in a
horoscope23
102Brighter than this. Thy flesh shall rest in hope,
103And thou shalt see thy saviour with these eyes,
104When that bright sun of righteousness shall rise.
105With healing wings he shall from my sad eyes
106And from all faces else wipe off the tears;
107So from all hearts he will dispel all fears.
108Oh then (till then) send
grace24
into my heart,
109Which from my throbbing bosom ne’er shall part;
110But I’ll improve’t, my few and evil days,
111Until it doth exhale in thanks and praise.
Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.

Amplified Edition,

edited by Lara Doddsi

Editorial Note

I have modernized spelling and punctuation in this poem with the aim of enhancing clarity and readability. The notes gloss unfamiliar words and provide cultural and literary contexts.
Macron symbol indicating the end of a poem.
  • Lara Dodds, Mississippi State University
  • she
    i.e., Aurora, the harbinger of dawn.
  • Aurora with her orient light
    Aurora is the Goddess of the Dawn. Aurora is a touchstone in Pulter’s poetry, and apostrophes to or personifications of Aurora appear in several of her poems, including Aurora [1]3, To Aurora [1]22, To Aurora [2]26, To Aurora [3]34, and Aurora 21]37.
  • melancholy Night
    Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night, here construed as an enemy to be defeated by Dawn.
  • Cynthia with her glittering train
    Cynthia is another name for Selene, the Greek goddess of the moon. In this context, her “glittering train” is made of stars.
  • debreathe
    an unusual word not widely attested, which may mean “cease breathing.”
  • firmament
    the sky or heavens.
  • See how Aurora sprinkles dewlike pearls

    May-dew is prized for its cosmetic and medicinal properties. In Irelands Natural History, Gerard Boate explains how to gather it:

    “The English women, and Gentlewomen in Ireland, as in England, did use in the beginning of the Summer to gather good store of Dew, to keep it by them all year for several good uses both of physick and otherwise, wherein by experience they have learnt it to be very available. Their manner of collecting and keeping it was this. In the moneth of May especially, and also in part of the moneth of June, they would go forth betimes in the morning, and before Sun-rising, into a green field, and there either with their hands strike off the Dew from the tops of the herbs into a dish, or else throwing clean linen clothes upon the ground, take off the Dew from the herbs into them, and afterwards wring it out into dishes.”
    Gerarde Boate, Irelands Natural History, London, 1652, pp. 170-71.

    Dew might be gathered from many different plants, but Boate explains that dew from “green corn, especially Wheat” has “more vertues” (171).

  • sweet and pleasant closes
    “close” is a technical term for the conclusion of a musical phrase.
  • myrtle and with roses
    symbols of beauty, peace, and love, perhaps signifying the strength of the speaker’s marriage, as they remain “flowery, fresh, and green.”
  • cypress buds
    symbols of mourning, perhaps signifying the premature deaths of many of Pulter’s children.
  • true
    a manuscript addition corrects “pure” to “true.”
  • Apollo
    God of the Sun.
  • occidental race
    westward; Apollo travels toward the sunset in the West; i.e., toward night, when he is reunited with Thetis, a sea nymph.
  • solsequium
    a Latin name for the sunflower; also sometimes called the heliotrope. In The Garden12, the heliotrope defiantly declares “I’m not afraid” to look upon the sun.
  • Phoebus
    another name for Apollo; the sun. See also See Heliotropians (Emblem 3)69.
  • orient
    of the East or the dawn; bright, luminous, radiant. The speaker distinguishes herself from the sunflower who eagerly follows her lover (the sun) across the sky thus displaying her beauty. When the speaker observes the eroticized harmony between the sun and flower, however, her eyes are “dazzled,” her spirits “damp[ened],” and her “deformity” revealed.
  • He burns me black

    i.e. the speaker is sunburned. Pulter adopts a trope of Petrarchan love poetry to describe the painful experience of unrequited devotion. Compare to Lady Mary Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus sonnet 22:

    Like to the Indians, scorched with the sunne,
    The sunn which they doe as theyr God adore
    Soe ame I us’d by love, for ever more
    I worship him, less favors have I wunn.
    Josephine Roberts, ed. The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, p. 99.
  • a life most transitory
    see Genesis 2:16-17; one consequence of Adam and Eve’s disobedience is death.
  • Should fellows be and further our delight

    Pulter suggests that one consequence of the Fall is her lack of harmony with the universe, particularly the stars and planets. In a state of innocence, “no sun nor moon” could hurt her, and, further, the heavenly bodies would be “fellows” and a source of “delight.” This claim may refer to legends about how the Fall transformed the physical environment and subjected humans to physical suffering, as well as to debates about how the Fall limits humans’ ability to know both their physical environment and God. Compare Milton’s Paradise Lost, which engages with both traditions. In Book 11, the angels change the orientation of the Earth so that heat of the Sun is intensified and in order to create potentially harmful astrological influences (see 11. 649-78). In book 12, Michael tells Adam that his loss requires him to turn away from knowledge of the heavens:

    This having learnt, thou hast attained the summe
    Of wisdom; hope no higher, though all the Starrs
    Thou knewst by name, and all th’ ethereal Powers,
    All secrets of the deep, all Natures works,
    Or works of God in Heav’n, Aire, Earth, or Sea,
    And all the riches of this World enjoydst,
    And all the rule, one Empire (12.575-81)
  • Saturn’s my ascendant
    In astrology the ascendant is the degree of the zodiac rising over the horizon at a particular moment such as the birth of a child. Saturn is the planet associated with melancholy; Pulter suggests that in a state of innocence she would not have to worry about the potentially negative impacts of her ascendant planet.
  • some planet looked awry
    obliquely, unevenly, crookedly, or askew (OED “awry” adv.1a., 1b.). Pulter’s speaker laments that her melancholy causes her to forget God’s care for his creatures.
  • requiem
    mass, prayer, or song for the soul of a dead person.
  • horoscope
    the observation of the sky and the configuration of the planets at the time of an individual’s birth; Pulter imagines the casting of a “brighter” horoscope at the time of death.
  • grace
    God’s benevolence or favor toward humanity (OED “grace,” n.1a.; 1b.).
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