The Welcome [2]

Edited by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall

Death is hailed as an old friend in this, the second of two poems so named. Both warmly address this usually-feared figure in casual diction which suggests the speaker’s utter comfort with her own mortality. An easy, homey analogy of dying with going to bed, however, soon collides with the more complex cosmology that is typical of much of Pulter’s verse. The result lets the speaker’s sense of humor (which depicts her posthumously taking a nap in oblivion) join with a serious vision of a more lasting, longed-for transformation of her being.

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Death, come, and welcome; thou art my ancient friend;
Of all my suff’rings, thou wilt make an end.
Young children cry, or grumble at the best,
To go to bed; I know it is my rest.
Therefore as cheerfully I’ll lay me down
In dust1
 as in the daintiest2
 bed of down,
Where I to my first principles3
 must turn,
And take a nap in black oblivion’s urn
Until the sun of life4
 arise in glory—
And then begins my everlasting story5
.