My Soul’s Sole Desire

Edited by Sarah C. E. Ross

This is one of several poems in Pulter’s manuscript articulating her soul’s desire for divine love, and looking beyond the “sad shades” of earthly life to the promise of its continuation “above”. For a close comparison, see Must I Thus Ever Interdicted Be55, and see also Dear God, from Thy High Throne Look Down63. These devotional lyrics are personal colloquies with God, and they are simple and delicately rendered, of a kind likely to be broadly influenced by the plain style of George Herbert. Herbert’sThe Temple (1633) was widely read and widely imitated by women writers of devotional verse in the seventeenth century. See extracts from Helen Wilcox, Entering The Temple in Curations.

The Herbertian qualities of the poem are evident in its combination of apparent simplicity with actual intricacy. It follows a consistent three-line stanza form with a shortened, dimeter, third line, creating an emphasis that serves well the final “My God and king”. These dimeter lines rhyme in pairs across stanzas. Pulter uses the same form (with the slight variation of dimeter lines rhyming in threes across stanzas) in “Dear God, from Thy High Throne Look Down” (Poem 63); and a similar form is used in Made When My Spirits Were Sunk Very Low66. In the case of the lyric to hand, the consistent rhyme and meter give a sense of the poem as a song, approximating the “celestial lays” to which the speaker looks forward. These celestial songs are literally “unknown” to her, and so the songs she sings on earth can only ever be poor approximations; however, Pulter’s sense of continuity between her own devotional lyrics and these heavenly lays is intimated in her poem This Was Written in 164845: “I’ll such lays here begin, shall end above” (line 68).

Compare Editions

Thou that didst on the chaos1
 move,
Illustrious spirit of life and love,
O pity me

And on my dark soul deign to shine:
Sin, Death, and Hell, will all resign
Their place to thee.

Then shall my soul’s sad shades of night
Be turned into meridian2
 light
Until my story,3

Begun below, goes on above
In joy and life, being crowned by love4
,
With endless glory.

Then those unknown celestial lays5
,
Those hallelujahs to thy praise,
I’ll ever sing

And thine immensity6
 implore,
Thy majesty alone adore:
My God and king.7