The Circle [4]

Edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall

In a short poem composed of five tetrameter couplets and constituting a single long sentence, Pulter fuses two of her favorite topics: circles and sunrise. In this last of four poems entitled “The Circle,” she describes God’s circular movement downward from the heavens that concludes with Astraea, the last deity living on earth, fleeing back to skies to become the constellation Virgo. In the middle of this cycle Pulter presents an interesting conversion and return from biblical to classical contexts: the male “eternal Spirit” who creates the world by separating light out of chaos morphs into the female classical figure of Aurora (goddess of the dawn), who gives birth to Astraea (goddess of justice). Astraea lived on earth during the utopian Golden Age, which Pulter characterizes as a time when Christian truths were revealed to humans (who had fallen through sin, unlike God’s descent through grace). Astraea completes the motion of the circle by returning to be enveloped in the heavens (and Heaven). The proliferating clauses of the sentence underscore the generative genealogy of divine powers.

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The eternal Spirit of life and love,
Descending from His throne above,
From nature’s mass, extracted Light1
,
Biding2
 her triumph over Night,
Who, in her prime of youth and day,
Lovely Astraea3
 did display4
,
Who, conquering all the shades infernal5
,
Her virgin womb showed life eternal
To lapséd6
 man, then flew above
To be involved7
 again in life and love.