The Welcome [1]

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The Welcome [1]

Poem #19

Original Source

Hester Pulter, Poems breathed forth by the nobel Hadassas, University of Leeds Library, Brotherton Collection, MS Lt q 32

Versions

  • Facsimile of manuscript: Photographs provided by University of Leeds, Brotherton Collection

  • Transcription of manuscript: By Leah Knight and Wendy Wall.
  • Elemental edition: By Leah Knight and Wendy Wall.
  • Amplified edition: By Elisa Tersigni.

How to cite these versions

Conventions for these editions

The Pulter Project: Poet in the Making

  • Created by Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
  • Encoded by Katherine Poland, Matthew Taylor, Elizabeth Chou, and Emily Andrey, Northwestern University
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  • IT project consultation by Josh Honn, Northwestern University
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X (Close panel)Notes: Transcription

 Editorial note

In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.
Line number 14

 Physical note

“ain” written over other indiscernible letters
Sorry, but there are no notes associated with any currently displayed witness.
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Transcription
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
The Welcom
The Welcome [1]
The Welcom
In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
This edition is a semi-diplomatic transcription, preserving the original spelling (including “ff” in lines 12 and 15), capitalization, punctuation, and lineation. The interlinear addition of “then” in line 7 is marked with a caret (^). As the Elemental Edition offers a modernized and punctuated version of the poem, this Amplified Edition is meant as a complement, opening up alternative interpretations. Thus the footnotes detail the challenges of reading Pulter’s idiosyncratic grammar and spelling, and offer options for readings, rather than solutions.
The editor thanks Julia Fine, Leah Knight, Randall McLeod, Timothy P.J. Perry, Haylie Swenson, K Vanderpark, Wendy Wall, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The editor also acknowledges the support of the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
In this brief poem, death is bid both welcome and farewell, as if in mimicry of its transient power in Pulter’s cosmology. Even the speaker’s easy personification and colloquial diction in the opening lines helps downgrade death as a threat. The speaker’s problem, indeed, is that she cannot die: which is her fault, since a tender heart would have broken already (presumably from the grief she mentions more than once here, as in other poems alluding to the passing of Pulter’s political heroes and children). But her heart is hard, or “petrified,” a word which in Pulter’s time meant not scared but turned to stone. This image might suggest the speaker’s unfitness as a Christian; what is almost as bad, though, is that such hardness of heart has paradoxically protected her from an otherwise lethal grief: that is, grieving others’ deaths has delayed her own. But in this poem, the speaker seizes the opportunity to turn away from the past and toward her desired death–and with it, presumably, the equally desired end of the grief that forestalled her death until now.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
Poem 19 is the first of two poems titled “The Welcom(e)”. (See also The Welcome [2] [Poem 33].) In both poems, the speaker welcomes death; but, in Poem 19, the irregular rhyme schemes and inharmonic cadences suggest how uneasy and contradictory the speaker’s thinking about death actually is.
The poem opens with the speaker offering her soul to personified Death, only to turn immediately from her at the start of the second line and listen to the tolling bell, which presumably marks the speaker’s impending death and asks that listeners pray for her departing soul. The speaker’s calling the bell “sweet” is ironic: early modern and modern European bells have a characteristic minor overtone, which gives them an inherently melancholic sound. The irony is doubled in this line’s echo of John Donne’s Devotions (1624). By asking “is it not for mee the bell doth toll?”, the speaker does what Donne says not to do: “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” Nevertheless, her leading question implies that she arrives at the same conclusion as Donne: the bell tolls for her, metaphorically if not literally.
The speaker then asks the reader to “trust” her—someone who has just revealed herself to be uncertain, asking questions without clear answers. She characterizes death as merely a brief and uneventful physiological experience (“a sigh and turning up the eye”) and a somewhat sad social occasion (“a few sad farewels to our freinds”). She claims that, for the tender-hearted on her deathbed, the grief of saying goodbye to her friends is enough to break her heart. But instead of breaking the speaker’s heart, grief has hardened it to stone, and so she finds herself simultaneously not fully alive and unable to die.
In l. 10, the speaker turns her attention again, this time to address her soul. The speaker treats her body and her soul as different entities, at odds with each other: her soul is imprisoned within her body. After her body dies, her soul will live in heaven. In looking forward to her soul’s saying “Adue” to Death, the speaker anticipates not the “sad farewell” she claimed in l. 6, but a happy end to Death’s recurring visits and a new beginning in the afterlife.
Several of Pulter’s poems have the speaker addressing Death, which, though not usually given a gender, is sometimes described with masculine or feminine pronouns, as in “The Welcome” [1]. In early modern European art and literature, personified Death was depicted interchangeably with masculine and feminine features (ex. having a beard or breasts), sometimes in the same work
Gloss Note
See, for instance, the Basel Dance of Death (ca. 1440), in which Death is presented in many forms and gendered with both feminine and masculine features. For more on the gendering of personified Death, see Karl S. Guthke’s The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature (1999) and Diana Burton’s “The Gender of Death” in Personification in The Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium (2005).
1. The speaker’s description of Death as feminine is thus not exceptional. But Death in this poem is unusually social: she travels with her retinue, unlike the lone image of Death that was and remains common. The speaker’s death is likewise a social activity, involving parallel goodbyes to her friends in life and her friend in Death.
Pulter’s Death diverges from her contemporaries’ Death in several other ways. Donne’s Death in “Death be not proud” is opportunistic and engaged in a power struggle: he is a “slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and dwells with “poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Herbert’s Death in “Death” is highly material, “[n]othing but bones” until Christ’s “death did put some bloud / Into thy face”. As Herbert’s speaker finds beauty in death, Pulter’s speaker finds freedom from the confines of life. Whereas, in Donne’s and Herbert’s poems, death is transformed by Christ’s sacrifice—bringing new life, it is no longer something to be feared—in Pulter’s poem a nuanced struggle unfolds between one’s spiritual beliefs about death and its material realities: death is a release only for the redeemed Christian soul.
For more about Pulter’s depictions of Death and death, see the following Curations: Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Dear Death, Helen Smith’s The Good Death and Memento Mori, Elisa Tersigni’s Personified Death in Early Modern Art and Literature, and Wendy Wall’s Talking to Death. For more on the speaker’s desire for death, see Frances E. Dolan’s Desiring Death and More Ruminations on Death and Resurrection.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
1
Deare Death thou’rt welcom to my troubled Soul
Dear Death, thou’rt welcome to my troubled soul.
Critical Note
Pulter also opens The Hope [Poem 65] with “Dear Death”. For more on this opening, see Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Curation, Dear Death.
Deare Death
Critical Note
“Thou’rt” is read as a single syllable to keep the metre of the line.
thou’rt welcom to my troubled soul
2
Hark, is it not for mee the bell doth toll?
Hark: is it not for me the bell doth toll?
Hark,
Critical Note
This line echoes John Donne’s Devotions vpon emergent occasions (London, 1624): “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” In early modern England, bells were rung to mark a person’s impending death, their moment of passing, and their funeral.
is it not for mee the bell doth toll?
3
How Sweet it Sounds? trust mee I wonder why
How sweet it sounds! Trust me, I wonder why
Critical Note
Early modern European bells had a minor overtone, giving them an inherently melancholic sound. By posing the statement that the bell sounds sweet as a question, the speaker underscores its ironic description and highlights her uncertainty. Leah Knight’s and Wendy Wall’s Elemental Edition punctuates this phrase with an exclamation mark although the manuscript has a question mark. While the syntax is indeed typical of an exclamatory statement, it is nevertheless possible to retain the original punctuation without disrupting the internal coherence of the poem: questions in English are usually formed with the verb “to do” (i.e., “how sweet does it sound?” or “does it sound sweet?”) but they can also be formed simply by adding a question mark to a statement, with a change of intonation. The effect of this is usually to undermine the equivalent statement by expressing surprise or doubt. “How sweet it sounds?” can therefore be read as a surprised or doubtful response to an implied statement “How sweet it sounds!” This sense of surprise or doubt is perhaps caused by the contrast between the sound of a bell ringing for death and the idea of its sounding sweet. This seeming contradiction is then reinforced by the following “trust mee”.
How sweet it sounds? trust mee I wonder why
4
Wee are Soe foolliſhly afraid to die
We are so foolishly afraid to die;
Wee are soe foollishly afraid to die
5
Ti’s but a Sigh and turning up the eye,
’Tis but a sigh and turning up the eye,
Ti’s but a sigh and turning up the eye.
6
A few Sad farewels to our freinds to Speak
A few sad farewells
Critical Note
Pronounce as one syllable (i.e., “t’our”) to maintain meter.
to our friends to speak,
A few sad farewels to our freinds to speak
7
And ^then a tender heart will quickly break
And then a tender heart will quickly break.
And ^
Critical Note
The interlinear addition of “then” completes the metre.
then a tender heart will quickly break
8
But my Sad heart (ay mee) is petrified
But my sad heart (ay me) is
Gloss Note
converted to stone
petrified,
But my sad heart (ay mee) is
Gloss Note
Hardened to stone.
petrified
9
Or elce with Griefe I long agon had died
Or else with grief I long ago had died;
Or elce with Griefe I long agon had died
10
But now my Soul thou Shalt infranchiſed bee
But now, my soul, thou shalt
Gloss Note
freed from confinement or subjection
enfranchised be,
But now my soul thou shalt
Gloss Note
Made free.
infranchised bee
11
Though my flesh trembles ti’s good news for thee
Though my flesh trembles, ’tis good news for thee.
Though my flesh trembles ti’s good news for thee
12
ffor thou to heaven again Shall take thy fleight
For thou to heav’n again shall take thy flight
ffor thou to
Critical Note
To keep the metre of the line, “heaven” can be read as a single syllable (“heav’n”).
heaven again shall take thy fleight
13
And bee involv’d in Joy, Life, Love, and Light
And be
Gloss Note
enveloped, entangled
involved in joy, life, love, and light.
And bee
Critical Note
Words with an “ed” ending, such as “involved”, can be pronounced in multiple ways: emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv-èd), which adds an additional syllable to the word, or not emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv’d); these alternate pronunciations are convenient for writing in pentameter. While the convention in early modern English poetry is to syllabize the “ed” ending when it is written as such (i.e., “involved”) and not when it is written using an apostrophe in place of the “e” (i.e., “involv’d”), poets do not always adhere to this convention. In her Curation Manuscript Ambiguities, Liza Blake argues that Pulter’s manuscript is written in two different hands: Pulter’s own hand and that of her scribe; “The Welcom” (Poem 19) is written in the latter. Both hands are inconsistent in their spellings of past participles. Compare, for instance, “troubled” in line 1 and “involv’d” in line 13: to keep the metre of the lines, both “ed” endings are not pronounced, and yet they are spelled differently.
involv’d in Ioy, Life, Love, and Light
14
Then bid Adue to Death and her Curst
Physical Note
“ain” written over other indiscernible letters
train
Then bid adieu to Death and her cursed
Gloss Note
treachery, trap, followers, artillery, manner of action, or consequences
train,
Then bid Adue to Death and
Critical Note
While in early modern Europe, personified Death was presented as male, female, or neuter, Pulter uses gendered pronouns to refer to Death in only six poems, three of which use the pronoun "she". Dear God, Turn Not Away Thy Face [Poem 20] and My Soul, Why Art Thou Full of Trouble? [Poem 40] also describe Death as feminine.
her Curst
Gloss Note
“A number of people following, accompanying, or attending on a person, usually one of high rank of importance” (OED). It is not clear of what or whom Death’s train is composed. In “Death be not proud,” Donne’s Death dwells “with poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Death’s train here may likewise be composed of people or of other personifications, perhaps of the grief and pain of the poem’s final line.
train
15
ffor thou Shalt never more Return againe
For thou shalt never more return again
ffor thou shalt nevermore return againe
16
To bee aflicted here with Griefe & paine.
To be afflicted here with grief and pain.
To be aflicted here with Griefe & paine.
X (Close panel)Notes: Elemental Edition

 Editorial note

The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

 Headnote

In this brief poem, death is bid both welcome and farewell, as if in mimicry of its transient power in Pulter’s cosmology. Even the speaker’s easy personification and colloquial diction in the opening lines helps downgrade death as a threat. The speaker’s problem, indeed, is that she cannot die: which is her fault, since a tender heart would have broken already (presumably from the grief she mentions more than once here, as in other poems alluding to the passing of Pulter’s political heroes and children). But her heart is hard, or “petrified,” a word which in Pulter’s time meant not scared but turned to stone. This image might suggest the speaker’s unfitness as a Christian; what is almost as bad, though, is that such hardness of heart has paradoxically protected her from an otherwise lethal grief: that is, grieving others’ deaths has delayed her own. But in this poem, the speaker seizes the opportunity to turn away from the past and toward her desired death–and with it, presumably, the equally desired end of the grief that forestalled her death until now.
Line number 6

 Critical note

Pronounce as one syllable (i.e., “t’our”) to maintain meter.
Line number 8

 Gloss note

converted to stone
Line number 10

 Gloss note

freed from confinement or subjection
Line number 13

 Gloss note

enveloped, entangled
Line number 14

 Gloss note

treachery, trap, followers, artillery, manner of action, or consequences
Sorry, but there are no notes associated with any currently displayed witness.
X (Close panel)Elemental Edition
Elemental Edition
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
Facsimile Image Placeholder
The Welcom
The Welcome [1]
The Welcom
In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
This edition is a semi-diplomatic transcription, preserving the original spelling (including “ff” in lines 12 and 15), capitalization, punctuation, and lineation. The interlinear addition of “then” in line 7 is marked with a caret (^). As the Elemental Edition offers a modernized and punctuated version of the poem, this Amplified Edition is meant as a complement, opening up alternative interpretations. Thus the footnotes detail the challenges of reading Pulter’s idiosyncratic grammar and spelling, and offer options for readings, rather than solutions.
The editor thanks Julia Fine, Leah Knight, Randall McLeod, Timothy P.J. Perry, Haylie Swenson, K Vanderpark, Wendy Wall, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The editor also acknowledges the support of the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
In this brief poem, death is bid both welcome and farewell, as if in mimicry of its transient power in Pulter’s cosmology. Even the speaker’s easy personification and colloquial diction in the opening lines helps downgrade death as a threat. The speaker’s problem, indeed, is that she cannot die: which is her fault, since a tender heart would have broken already (presumably from the grief she mentions more than once here, as in other poems alluding to the passing of Pulter’s political heroes and children). But her heart is hard, or “petrified,” a word which in Pulter’s time meant not scared but turned to stone. This image might suggest the speaker’s unfitness as a Christian; what is almost as bad, though, is that such hardness of heart has paradoxically protected her from an otherwise lethal grief: that is, grieving others’ deaths has delayed her own. But in this poem, the speaker seizes the opportunity to turn away from the past and toward her desired death–and with it, presumably, the equally desired end of the grief that forestalled her death until now.

— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
Poem 19 is the first of two poems titled “The Welcom(e)”. (See also The Welcome [2] [Poem 33].) In both poems, the speaker welcomes death; but, in Poem 19, the irregular rhyme schemes and inharmonic cadences suggest how uneasy and contradictory the speaker’s thinking about death actually is.
The poem opens with the speaker offering her soul to personified Death, only to turn immediately from her at the start of the second line and listen to the tolling bell, which presumably marks the speaker’s impending death and asks that listeners pray for her departing soul. The speaker’s calling the bell “sweet” is ironic: early modern and modern European bells have a characteristic minor overtone, which gives them an inherently melancholic sound. The irony is doubled in this line’s echo of John Donne’s Devotions (1624). By asking “is it not for mee the bell doth toll?”, the speaker does what Donne says not to do: “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” Nevertheless, her leading question implies that she arrives at the same conclusion as Donne: the bell tolls for her, metaphorically if not literally.
The speaker then asks the reader to “trust” her—someone who has just revealed herself to be uncertain, asking questions without clear answers. She characterizes death as merely a brief and uneventful physiological experience (“a sigh and turning up the eye”) and a somewhat sad social occasion (“a few sad farewels to our freinds”). She claims that, for the tender-hearted on her deathbed, the grief of saying goodbye to her friends is enough to break her heart. But instead of breaking the speaker’s heart, grief has hardened it to stone, and so she finds herself simultaneously not fully alive and unable to die.
In l. 10, the speaker turns her attention again, this time to address her soul. The speaker treats her body and her soul as different entities, at odds with each other: her soul is imprisoned within her body. After her body dies, her soul will live in heaven. In looking forward to her soul’s saying “Adue” to Death, the speaker anticipates not the “sad farewell” she claimed in l. 6, but a happy end to Death’s recurring visits and a new beginning in the afterlife.
Several of Pulter’s poems have the speaker addressing Death, which, though not usually given a gender, is sometimes described with masculine or feminine pronouns, as in “The Welcome” [1]. In early modern European art and literature, personified Death was depicted interchangeably with masculine and feminine features (ex. having a beard or breasts), sometimes in the same work
Gloss Note
See, for instance, the Basel Dance of Death (ca. 1440), in which Death is presented in many forms and gendered with both feminine and masculine features. For more on the gendering of personified Death, see Karl S. Guthke’s The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature (1999) and Diana Burton’s “The Gender of Death” in Personification in The Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium (2005).
1. The speaker’s description of Death as feminine is thus not exceptional. But Death in this poem is unusually social: she travels with her retinue, unlike the lone image of Death that was and remains common. The speaker’s death is likewise a social activity, involving parallel goodbyes to her friends in life and her friend in Death.
Pulter’s Death diverges from her contemporaries’ Death in several other ways. Donne’s Death in “Death be not proud” is opportunistic and engaged in a power struggle: he is a “slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and dwells with “poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Herbert’s Death in “Death” is highly material, “[n]othing but bones” until Christ’s “death did put some bloud / Into thy face”. As Herbert’s speaker finds beauty in death, Pulter’s speaker finds freedom from the confines of life. Whereas, in Donne’s and Herbert’s poems, death is transformed by Christ’s sacrifice—bringing new life, it is no longer something to be feared—in Pulter’s poem a nuanced struggle unfolds between one’s spiritual beliefs about death and its material realities: death is a release only for the redeemed Christian soul.
For more about Pulter’s depictions of Death and death, see the following Curations: Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Dear Death, Helen Smith’s The Good Death and Memento Mori, Elisa Tersigni’s Personified Death in Early Modern Art and Literature, and Wendy Wall’s Talking to Death. For more on the speaker’s desire for death, see Frances E. Dolan’s Desiring Death and More Ruminations on Death and Resurrection.


— Leah Knight and Wendy Wall
1
Deare Death thou’rt welcom to my troubled Soul
Dear Death, thou’rt welcome to my troubled soul.
Critical Note
Pulter also opens The Hope [Poem 65] with “Dear Death”. For more on this opening, see Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Curation, Dear Death.
Deare Death
Critical Note
“Thou’rt” is read as a single syllable to keep the metre of the line.
thou’rt welcom to my troubled soul
2
Hark, is it not for mee the bell doth toll?
Hark: is it not for me the bell doth toll?
Hark,
Critical Note
This line echoes John Donne’s Devotions vpon emergent occasions (London, 1624): “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” In early modern England, bells were rung to mark a person’s impending death, their moment of passing, and their funeral.
is it not for mee the bell doth toll?
3
How Sweet it Sounds? trust mee I wonder why
How sweet it sounds! Trust me, I wonder why
Critical Note
Early modern European bells had a minor overtone, giving them an inherently melancholic sound. By posing the statement that the bell sounds sweet as a question, the speaker underscores its ironic description and highlights her uncertainty. Leah Knight’s and Wendy Wall’s Elemental Edition punctuates this phrase with an exclamation mark although the manuscript has a question mark. While the syntax is indeed typical of an exclamatory statement, it is nevertheless possible to retain the original punctuation without disrupting the internal coherence of the poem: questions in English are usually formed with the verb “to do” (i.e., “how sweet does it sound?” or “does it sound sweet?”) but they can also be formed simply by adding a question mark to a statement, with a change of intonation. The effect of this is usually to undermine the equivalent statement by expressing surprise or doubt. “How sweet it sounds?” can therefore be read as a surprised or doubtful response to an implied statement “How sweet it sounds!” This sense of surprise or doubt is perhaps caused by the contrast between the sound of a bell ringing for death and the idea of its sounding sweet. This seeming contradiction is then reinforced by the following “trust mee”.
How sweet it sounds? trust mee I wonder why
4
Wee are Soe foolliſhly afraid to die
We are so foolishly afraid to die;
Wee are soe foollishly afraid to die
5
Ti’s but a Sigh and turning up the eye,
’Tis but a sigh and turning up the eye,
Ti’s but a sigh and turning up the eye.
6
A few Sad farewels to our freinds to Speak
A few sad farewells
Critical Note
Pronounce as one syllable (i.e., “t’our”) to maintain meter.
to our friends to speak,
A few sad farewels to our freinds to speak
7
And ^then a tender heart will quickly break
And then a tender heart will quickly break.
And ^
Critical Note
The interlinear addition of “then” completes the metre.
then a tender heart will quickly break
8
But my Sad heart (ay mee) is petrified
But my sad heart (ay me) is
Gloss Note
converted to stone
petrified,
But my sad heart (ay mee) is
Gloss Note
Hardened to stone.
petrified
9
Or elce with Griefe I long agon had died
Or else with grief I long ago had died;
Or elce with Griefe I long agon had died
10
But now my Soul thou Shalt infranchiſed bee
But now, my soul, thou shalt
Gloss Note
freed from confinement or subjection
enfranchised be,
But now my soul thou shalt
Gloss Note
Made free.
infranchised bee
11
Though my flesh trembles ti’s good news for thee
Though my flesh trembles, ’tis good news for thee.
Though my flesh trembles ti’s good news for thee
12
ffor thou to heaven again Shall take thy fleight
For thou to heav’n again shall take thy flight
ffor thou to
Critical Note
To keep the metre of the line, “heaven” can be read as a single syllable (“heav’n”).
heaven again shall take thy fleight
13
And bee involv’d in Joy, Life, Love, and Light
And be
Gloss Note
enveloped, entangled
involved in joy, life, love, and light.
And bee
Critical Note
Words with an “ed” ending, such as “involved”, can be pronounced in multiple ways: emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv-èd), which adds an additional syllable to the word, or not emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv’d); these alternate pronunciations are convenient for writing in pentameter. While the convention in early modern English poetry is to syllabize the “ed” ending when it is written as such (i.e., “involved”) and not when it is written using an apostrophe in place of the “e” (i.e., “involv’d”), poets do not always adhere to this convention. In her Curation Manuscript Ambiguities, Liza Blake argues that Pulter’s manuscript is written in two different hands: Pulter’s own hand and that of her scribe; “The Welcom” (Poem 19) is written in the latter. Both hands are inconsistent in their spellings of past participles. Compare, for instance, “troubled” in line 1 and “involv’d” in line 13: to keep the metre of the lines, both “ed” endings are not pronounced, and yet they are spelled differently.
involv’d in Ioy, Life, Love, and Light
14
Then bid Adue to Death and her Curst
Physical Note
“ain” written over other indiscernible letters
train
Then bid adieu to Death and her cursed
Gloss Note
treachery, trap, followers, artillery, manner of action, or consequences
train,
Then bid Adue to Death and
Critical Note
While in early modern Europe, personified Death was presented as male, female, or neuter, Pulter uses gendered pronouns to refer to Death in only six poems, three of which use the pronoun "she". Dear God, Turn Not Away Thy Face [Poem 20] and My Soul, Why Art Thou Full of Trouble? [Poem 40] also describe Death as feminine.
her Curst
Gloss Note
“A number of people following, accompanying, or attending on a person, usually one of high rank of importance” (OED). It is not clear of what or whom Death’s train is composed. In “Death be not proud,” Donne’s Death dwells “with poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Death’s train here may likewise be composed of people or of other personifications, perhaps of the grief and pain of the poem’s final line.
train
15
ffor thou Shalt never more Return againe
For thou shalt never more return again
ffor thou shalt nevermore return againe
16
To bee aflicted here with Griefe & paine.
To be afflicted here with grief and pain.
To be aflicted here with Griefe & paine.
X (Close panel)Notes: Amplified Edition

 Editorial note

This edition is a semi-diplomatic transcription, preserving the original spelling (including “ff” in lines 12 and 15), capitalization, punctuation, and lineation. The interlinear addition of “then” in line 7 is marked with a caret (^). As the Elemental Edition offers a modernized and punctuated version of the poem, this Amplified Edition is meant as a complement, opening up alternative interpretations. Thus the footnotes detail the challenges of reading Pulter’s idiosyncratic grammar and spelling, and offer options for readings, rather than solutions.
The editor thanks Julia Fine, Leah Knight, Randall McLeod, Timothy P.J. Perry, Haylie Swenson, K Vanderpark, Wendy Wall, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The editor also acknowledges the support of the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

 Headnote

Poem 19 is the first of two poems titled “The Welcom(e)”. (See also The Welcome [2] [Poem 33].) In both poems, the speaker welcomes death; but, in Poem 19, the irregular rhyme schemes and inharmonic cadences suggest how uneasy and contradictory the speaker’s thinking about death actually is.
The poem opens with the speaker offering her soul to personified Death, only to turn immediately from her at the start of the second line and listen to the tolling bell, which presumably marks the speaker’s impending death and asks that listeners pray for her departing soul. The speaker’s calling the bell “sweet” is ironic: early modern and modern European bells have a characteristic minor overtone, which gives them an inherently melancholic sound. The irony is doubled in this line’s echo of John Donne’s Devotions (1624). By asking “is it not for mee the bell doth toll?”, the speaker does what Donne says not to do: “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” Nevertheless, her leading question implies that she arrives at the same conclusion as Donne: the bell tolls for her, metaphorically if not literally.
The speaker then asks the reader to “trust” her—someone who has just revealed herself to be uncertain, asking questions without clear answers. She characterizes death as merely a brief and uneventful physiological experience (“a sigh and turning up the eye”) and a somewhat sad social occasion (“a few sad farewels to our freinds”). She claims that, for the tender-hearted on her deathbed, the grief of saying goodbye to her friends is enough to break her heart. But instead of breaking the speaker’s heart, grief has hardened it to stone, and so she finds herself simultaneously not fully alive and unable to die.
In l. 10, the speaker turns her attention again, this time to address her soul. The speaker treats her body and her soul as different entities, at odds with each other: her soul is imprisoned within her body. After her body dies, her soul will live in heaven. In looking forward to her soul’s saying “Adue” to Death, the speaker anticipates not the “sad farewell” she claimed in l. 6, but a happy end to Death’s recurring visits and a new beginning in the afterlife.
Several of Pulter’s poems have the speaker addressing Death, which, though not usually given a gender, is sometimes described with masculine or feminine pronouns, as in “The Welcome” [1]. In early modern European art and literature, personified Death was depicted interchangeably with masculine and feminine features (ex. having a beard or breasts), sometimes in the same work
Gloss Note
See, for instance, the Basel Dance of Death (ca. 1440), in which Death is presented in many forms and gendered with both feminine and masculine features. For more on the gendering of personified Death, see Karl S. Guthke’s The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature (1999) and Diana Burton’s “The Gender of Death” in Personification in The Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium (2005).
1. The speaker’s description of Death as feminine is thus not exceptional. But Death in this poem is unusually social: she travels with her retinue, unlike the lone image of Death that was and remains common. The speaker’s death is likewise a social activity, involving parallel goodbyes to her friends in life and her friend in Death.
Pulter’s Death diverges from her contemporaries’ Death in several other ways. Donne’s Death in “Death be not proud” is opportunistic and engaged in a power struggle: he is a “slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and dwells with “poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Herbert’s Death in “Death” is highly material, “[n]othing but bones” until Christ’s “death did put some bloud / Into thy face”. As Herbert’s speaker finds beauty in death, Pulter’s speaker finds freedom from the confines of life. Whereas, in Donne’s and Herbert’s poems, death is transformed by Christ’s sacrifice—bringing new life, it is no longer something to be feared—in Pulter’s poem a nuanced struggle unfolds between one’s spiritual beliefs about death and its material realities: death is a release only for the redeemed Christian soul.
For more about Pulter’s depictions of Death and death, see the following Curations: Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Dear Death, Helen Smith’s The Good Death and Memento Mori, Elisa Tersigni’s Personified Death in Early Modern Art and Literature, and Wendy Wall’s Talking to Death. For more on the speaker’s desire for death, see Frances E. Dolan’s Desiring Death and More Ruminations on Death and Resurrection.
Line number 1

 Critical note

Pulter also opens The Hope [Poem 65] with “Dear Death”. For more on this opening, see Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Curation, Dear Death.
Line number 1

 Critical note

“Thou’rt” is read as a single syllable to keep the metre of the line.
Line number 2

 Critical note

This line echoes John Donne’s Devotions vpon emergent occasions (London, 1624): “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” In early modern England, bells were rung to mark a person’s impending death, their moment of passing, and their funeral.
Line number 3

 Critical note

Early modern European bells had a minor overtone, giving them an inherently melancholic sound. By posing the statement that the bell sounds sweet as a question, the speaker underscores its ironic description and highlights her uncertainty. Leah Knight’s and Wendy Wall’s Elemental Edition punctuates this phrase with an exclamation mark although the manuscript has a question mark. While the syntax is indeed typical of an exclamatory statement, it is nevertheless possible to retain the original punctuation without disrupting the internal coherence of the poem: questions in English are usually formed with the verb “to do” (i.e., “how sweet does it sound?” or “does it sound sweet?”) but they can also be formed simply by adding a question mark to a statement, with a change of intonation. The effect of this is usually to undermine the equivalent statement by expressing surprise or doubt. “How sweet it sounds?” can therefore be read as a surprised or doubtful response to an implied statement “How sweet it sounds!” This sense of surprise or doubt is perhaps caused by the contrast between the sound of a bell ringing for death and the idea of its sounding sweet. This seeming contradiction is then reinforced by the following “trust mee”.
Line number 7

 Critical note

The interlinear addition of “then” completes the metre.
Line number 8

 Gloss note

Hardened to stone.
Line number 10

 Gloss note

Made free.
Line number 12

 Critical note

To keep the metre of the line, “heaven” can be read as a single syllable (“heav’n”).
Line number 13

 Critical note

Words with an “ed” ending, such as “involved”, can be pronounced in multiple ways: emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv-èd), which adds an additional syllable to the word, or not emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv’d); these alternate pronunciations are convenient for writing in pentameter. While the convention in early modern English poetry is to syllabize the “ed” ending when it is written as such (i.e., “involved”) and not when it is written using an apostrophe in place of the “e” (i.e., “involv’d”), poets do not always adhere to this convention. In her Curation Manuscript Ambiguities, Liza Blake argues that Pulter’s manuscript is written in two different hands: Pulter’s own hand and that of her scribe; “The Welcom” (Poem 19) is written in the latter. Both hands are inconsistent in their spellings of past participles. Compare, for instance, “troubled” in line 1 and “involv’d” in line 13: to keep the metre of the lines, both “ed” endings are not pronounced, and yet they are spelled differently.
Line number 14

 Critical note

While in early modern Europe, personified Death was presented as male, female, or neuter, Pulter uses gendered pronouns to refer to Death in only six poems, three of which use the pronoun "she". Dear God, Turn Not Away Thy Face [Poem 20] and My Soul, Why Art Thou Full of Trouble? [Poem 40] also describe Death as feminine.
Line number 14

 Gloss note

“A number of people following, accompanying, or attending on a person, usually one of high rank of importance” (OED). It is not clear of what or whom Death’s train is composed. In “Death be not proud,” Donne’s Death dwells “with poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Death’s train here may likewise be composed of people or of other personifications, perhaps of the grief and pain of the poem’s final line.
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X (Close panel)Amplified Edition
Amplified Edition
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The Welcom
The Welcome [1]
The Welcom
In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.

— Elisa Tersigni
The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.

— Elisa Tersigni
This edition is a semi-diplomatic transcription, preserving the original spelling (including “ff” in lines 12 and 15), capitalization, punctuation, and lineation. The interlinear addition of “then” in line 7 is marked with a caret (^). As the Elemental Edition offers a modernized and punctuated version of the poem, this Amplified Edition is meant as a complement, opening up alternative interpretations. Thus the footnotes detail the challenges of reading Pulter’s idiosyncratic grammar and spelling, and offer options for readings, rather than solutions.
The editor thanks Julia Fine, Leah Knight, Randall McLeod, Timothy P.J. Perry, Haylie Swenson, K Vanderpark, Wendy Wall, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The editor also acknowledges the support of the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.


— Elisa Tersigni
In this brief poem, death is bid both welcome and farewell, as if in mimicry of its transient power in Pulter’s cosmology. Even the speaker’s easy personification and colloquial diction in the opening lines helps downgrade death as a threat. The speaker’s problem, indeed, is that she cannot die: which is her fault, since a tender heart would have broken already (presumably from the grief she mentions more than once here, as in other poems alluding to the passing of Pulter’s political heroes and children). But her heart is hard, or “petrified,” a word which in Pulter’s time meant not scared but turned to stone. This image might suggest the speaker’s unfitness as a Christian; what is almost as bad, though, is that such hardness of heart has paradoxically protected her from an otherwise lethal grief: that is, grieving others’ deaths has delayed her own. But in this poem, the speaker seizes the opportunity to turn away from the past and toward her desired death–and with it, presumably, the equally desired end of the grief that forestalled her death until now.

— Elisa Tersigni
Poem 19 is the first of two poems titled “The Welcom(e)”. (See also The Welcome [2] [Poem 33].) In both poems, the speaker welcomes death; but, in Poem 19, the irregular rhyme schemes and inharmonic cadences suggest how uneasy and contradictory the speaker’s thinking about death actually is.
The poem opens with the speaker offering her soul to personified Death, only to turn immediately from her at the start of the second line and listen to the tolling bell, which presumably marks the speaker’s impending death and asks that listeners pray for her departing soul. The speaker’s calling the bell “sweet” is ironic: early modern and modern European bells have a characteristic minor overtone, which gives them an inherently melancholic sound. The irony is doubled in this line’s echo of John Donne’s Devotions (1624). By asking “is it not for mee the bell doth toll?”, the speaker does what Donne says not to do: “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” Nevertheless, her leading question implies that she arrives at the same conclusion as Donne: the bell tolls for her, metaphorically if not literally.
The speaker then asks the reader to “trust” her—someone who has just revealed herself to be uncertain, asking questions without clear answers. She characterizes death as merely a brief and uneventful physiological experience (“a sigh and turning up the eye”) and a somewhat sad social occasion (“a few sad farewels to our freinds”). She claims that, for the tender-hearted on her deathbed, the grief of saying goodbye to her friends is enough to break her heart. But instead of breaking the speaker’s heart, grief has hardened it to stone, and so she finds herself simultaneously not fully alive and unable to die.
In l. 10, the speaker turns her attention again, this time to address her soul. The speaker treats her body and her soul as different entities, at odds with each other: her soul is imprisoned within her body. After her body dies, her soul will live in heaven. In looking forward to her soul’s saying “Adue” to Death, the speaker anticipates not the “sad farewell” she claimed in l. 6, but a happy end to Death’s recurring visits and a new beginning in the afterlife.
Several of Pulter’s poems have the speaker addressing Death, which, though not usually given a gender, is sometimes described with masculine or feminine pronouns, as in “The Welcome” [1]. In early modern European art and literature, personified Death was depicted interchangeably with masculine and feminine features (ex. having a beard or breasts), sometimes in the same work
Gloss Note
See, for instance, the Basel Dance of Death (ca. 1440), in which Death is presented in many forms and gendered with both feminine and masculine features. For more on the gendering of personified Death, see Karl S. Guthke’s The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature (1999) and Diana Burton’s “The Gender of Death” in Personification in The Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium (2005).
1. The speaker’s description of Death as feminine is thus not exceptional. But Death in this poem is unusually social: she travels with her retinue, unlike the lone image of Death that was and remains common. The speaker’s death is likewise a social activity, involving parallel goodbyes to her friends in life and her friend in Death.
Pulter’s Death diverges from her contemporaries’ Death in several other ways. Donne’s Death in “Death be not proud” is opportunistic and engaged in a power struggle: he is a “slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and dwells with “poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Herbert’s Death in “Death” is highly material, “[n]othing but bones” until Christ’s “death did put some bloud / Into thy face”. As Herbert’s speaker finds beauty in death, Pulter’s speaker finds freedom from the confines of life. Whereas, in Donne’s and Herbert’s poems, death is transformed by Christ’s sacrifice—bringing new life, it is no longer something to be feared—in Pulter’s poem a nuanced struggle unfolds between one’s spiritual beliefs about death and its material realities: death is a release only for the redeemed Christian soul.
For more about Pulter’s depictions of Death and death, see the following Curations: Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Dear Death, Helen Smith’s The Good Death and Memento Mori, Elisa Tersigni’s Personified Death in Early Modern Art and Literature, and Wendy Wall’s Talking to Death. For more on the speaker’s desire for death, see Frances E. Dolan’s Desiring Death and More Ruminations on Death and Resurrection.


— Elisa Tersigni
1
Deare Death thou’rt welcom to my troubled Soul
Dear Death, thou’rt welcome to my troubled soul.
Critical Note
Pulter also opens The Hope [Poem 65] with “Dear Death”. For more on this opening, see Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Curation, Dear Death.
Deare Death
Critical Note
“Thou’rt” is read as a single syllable to keep the metre of the line.
thou’rt welcom to my troubled soul
2
Hark, is it not for mee the bell doth toll?
Hark: is it not for me the bell doth toll?
Hark,
Critical Note
This line echoes John Donne’s Devotions vpon emergent occasions (London, 1624): “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” In early modern England, bells were rung to mark a person’s impending death, their moment of passing, and their funeral.
is it not for mee the bell doth toll?
3
How Sweet it Sounds? trust mee I wonder why
How sweet it sounds! Trust me, I wonder why
Critical Note
Early modern European bells had a minor overtone, giving them an inherently melancholic sound. By posing the statement that the bell sounds sweet as a question, the speaker underscores its ironic description and highlights her uncertainty. Leah Knight’s and Wendy Wall’s Elemental Edition punctuates this phrase with an exclamation mark although the manuscript has a question mark. While the syntax is indeed typical of an exclamatory statement, it is nevertheless possible to retain the original punctuation without disrupting the internal coherence of the poem: questions in English are usually formed with the verb “to do” (i.e., “how sweet does it sound?” or “does it sound sweet?”) but they can also be formed simply by adding a question mark to a statement, with a change of intonation. The effect of this is usually to undermine the equivalent statement by expressing surprise or doubt. “How sweet it sounds?” can therefore be read as a surprised or doubtful response to an implied statement “How sweet it sounds!” This sense of surprise or doubt is perhaps caused by the contrast between the sound of a bell ringing for death and the idea of its sounding sweet. This seeming contradiction is then reinforced by the following “trust mee”.
How sweet it sounds? trust mee I wonder why
4
Wee are Soe foolliſhly afraid to die
We are so foolishly afraid to die;
Wee are soe foollishly afraid to die
5
Ti’s but a Sigh and turning up the eye,
’Tis but a sigh and turning up the eye,
Ti’s but a sigh and turning up the eye.
6
A few Sad farewels to our freinds to Speak
A few sad farewells
Critical Note
Pronounce as one syllable (i.e., “t’our”) to maintain meter.
to our friends to speak,
A few sad farewels to our freinds to speak
7
And ^then a tender heart will quickly break
And then a tender heart will quickly break.
And ^
Critical Note
The interlinear addition of “then” completes the metre.
then a tender heart will quickly break
8
But my Sad heart (ay mee) is petrified
But my sad heart (ay me) is
Gloss Note
converted to stone
petrified,
But my sad heart (ay mee) is
Gloss Note
Hardened to stone.
petrified
9
Or elce with Griefe I long agon had died
Or else with grief I long ago had died;
Or elce with Griefe I long agon had died
10
But now my Soul thou Shalt infranchiſed bee
But now, my soul, thou shalt
Gloss Note
freed from confinement or subjection
enfranchised be,
But now my soul thou shalt
Gloss Note
Made free.
infranchised bee
11
Though my flesh trembles ti’s good news for thee
Though my flesh trembles, ’tis good news for thee.
Though my flesh trembles ti’s good news for thee
12
ffor thou to heaven again Shall take thy fleight
For thou to heav’n again shall take thy flight
ffor thou to
Critical Note
To keep the metre of the line, “heaven” can be read as a single syllable (“heav’n”).
heaven again shall take thy fleight
13
And bee involv’d in Joy, Life, Love, and Light
And be
Gloss Note
enveloped, entangled
involved in joy, life, love, and light.
And bee
Critical Note
Words with an “ed” ending, such as “involved”, can be pronounced in multiple ways: emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv-èd), which adds an additional syllable to the word, or not emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv’d); these alternate pronunciations are convenient for writing in pentameter. While the convention in early modern English poetry is to syllabize the “ed” ending when it is written as such (i.e., “involved”) and not when it is written using an apostrophe in place of the “e” (i.e., “involv’d”), poets do not always adhere to this convention. In her Curation Manuscript Ambiguities, Liza Blake argues that Pulter’s manuscript is written in two different hands: Pulter’s own hand and that of her scribe; “The Welcom” (Poem 19) is written in the latter. Both hands are inconsistent in their spellings of past participles. Compare, for instance, “troubled” in line 1 and “involv’d” in line 13: to keep the metre of the lines, both “ed” endings are not pronounced, and yet they are spelled differently.
involv’d in Ioy, Life, Love, and Light
14
Then bid Adue to Death and her Curst
Physical Note
“ain” written over other indiscernible letters
train
Then bid adieu to Death and her cursed
Gloss Note
treachery, trap, followers, artillery, manner of action, or consequences
train,
Then bid Adue to Death and
Critical Note
While in early modern Europe, personified Death was presented as male, female, or neuter, Pulter uses gendered pronouns to refer to Death in only six poems, three of which use the pronoun "she". Dear God, Turn Not Away Thy Face [Poem 20] and My Soul, Why Art Thou Full of Trouble? [Poem 40] also describe Death as feminine.
her Curst
Gloss Note
“A number of people following, accompanying, or attending on a person, usually one of high rank of importance” (OED). It is not clear of what or whom Death’s train is composed. In “Death be not proud,” Donne’s Death dwells “with poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Death’s train here may likewise be composed of people or of other personifications, perhaps of the grief and pain of the poem’s final line.
train
15
ffor thou Shalt never more Return againe
For thou shalt never more return again
ffor thou shalt nevermore return againe
16
To bee aflicted here with Griefe & paine.
To be afflicted here with grief and pain.
To be aflicted here with Griefe & paine.
X (Close panel) All Notes
Transcription

 Editorial note

In these transcriptions we preserve as many details of the original material, textual, and graphic properties of Hester Pulter’s manuscript verse as we have found practical. Whenever possible, for instance, original spelling, punctuation, capitalization, lineation, insertions, deletions, alterations, spacing between words and lines, and indentation are all maintained; abbreviations and brevigraphs are not expanded; and superscript and subscript representations are retained. See full conventions for the transcriptions here.
Elemental Edition

 Editorial note

The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.
Amplified Edition

 Editorial note

This edition is a semi-diplomatic transcription, preserving the original spelling (including “ff” in lines 12 and 15), capitalization, punctuation, and lineation. The interlinear addition of “then” in line 7 is marked with a caret (^). As the Elemental Edition offers a modernized and punctuated version of the poem, this Amplified Edition is meant as a complement, opening up alternative interpretations. Thus the footnotes detail the challenges of reading Pulter’s idiosyncratic grammar and spelling, and offer options for readings, rather than solutions.
The editor thanks Julia Fine, Leah Knight, Randall McLeod, Timothy P.J. Perry, Haylie Swenson, K Vanderpark, Wendy Wall, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The editor also acknowledges the support of the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Elemental Edition

 Headnote

In this brief poem, death is bid both welcome and farewell, as if in mimicry of its transient power in Pulter’s cosmology. Even the speaker’s easy personification and colloquial diction in the opening lines helps downgrade death as a threat. The speaker’s problem, indeed, is that she cannot die: which is her fault, since a tender heart would have broken already (presumably from the grief she mentions more than once here, as in other poems alluding to the passing of Pulter’s political heroes and children). But her heart is hard, or “petrified,” a word which in Pulter’s time meant not scared but turned to stone. This image might suggest the speaker’s unfitness as a Christian; what is almost as bad, though, is that such hardness of heart has paradoxically protected her from an otherwise lethal grief: that is, grieving others’ deaths has delayed her own. But in this poem, the speaker seizes the opportunity to turn away from the past and toward her desired death–and with it, presumably, the equally desired end of the grief that forestalled her death until now.
Amplified Edition

 Headnote

Poem 19 is the first of two poems titled “The Welcom(e)”. (See also The Welcome [2] [Poem 33].) In both poems, the speaker welcomes death; but, in Poem 19, the irregular rhyme schemes and inharmonic cadences suggest how uneasy and contradictory the speaker’s thinking about death actually is.
The poem opens with the speaker offering her soul to personified Death, only to turn immediately from her at the start of the second line and listen to the tolling bell, which presumably marks the speaker’s impending death and asks that listeners pray for her departing soul. The speaker’s calling the bell “sweet” is ironic: early modern and modern European bells have a characteristic minor overtone, which gives them an inherently melancholic sound. The irony is doubled in this line’s echo of John Donne’s Devotions (1624). By asking “is it not for mee the bell doth toll?”, the speaker does what Donne says not to do: “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” Nevertheless, her leading question implies that she arrives at the same conclusion as Donne: the bell tolls for her, metaphorically if not literally.
The speaker then asks the reader to “trust” her—someone who has just revealed herself to be uncertain, asking questions without clear answers. She characterizes death as merely a brief and uneventful physiological experience (“a sigh and turning up the eye”) and a somewhat sad social occasion (“a few sad farewels to our freinds”). She claims that, for the tender-hearted on her deathbed, the grief of saying goodbye to her friends is enough to break her heart. But instead of breaking the speaker’s heart, grief has hardened it to stone, and so she finds herself simultaneously not fully alive and unable to die.
In l. 10, the speaker turns her attention again, this time to address her soul. The speaker treats her body and her soul as different entities, at odds with each other: her soul is imprisoned within her body. After her body dies, her soul will live in heaven. In looking forward to her soul’s saying “Adue” to Death, the speaker anticipates not the “sad farewell” she claimed in l. 6, but a happy end to Death’s recurring visits and a new beginning in the afterlife.
Several of Pulter’s poems have the speaker addressing Death, which, though not usually given a gender, is sometimes described with masculine or feminine pronouns, as in “The Welcome” [1]. In early modern European art and literature, personified Death was depicted interchangeably with masculine and feminine features (ex. having a beard or breasts), sometimes in the same work
Gloss Note
See, for instance, the Basel Dance of Death (ca. 1440), in which Death is presented in many forms and gendered with both feminine and masculine features. For more on the gendering of personified Death, see Karl S. Guthke’s The Gender of Death: A Cultural History in Art and Literature (1999) and Diana Burton’s “The Gender of Death” in Personification in The Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium (2005).
1. The speaker’s description of Death as feminine is thus not exceptional. But Death in this poem is unusually social: she travels with her retinue, unlike the lone image of Death that was and remains common. The speaker’s death is likewise a social activity, involving parallel goodbyes to her friends in life and her friend in Death.
Pulter’s Death diverges from her contemporaries’ Death in several other ways. Donne’s Death in “Death be not proud” is opportunistic and engaged in a power struggle: he is a “slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” and dwells with “poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Herbert’s Death in “Death” is highly material, “[n]othing but bones” until Christ’s “death did put some bloud / Into thy face”. As Herbert’s speaker finds beauty in death, Pulter’s speaker finds freedom from the confines of life. Whereas, in Donne’s and Herbert’s poems, death is transformed by Christ’s sacrifice—bringing new life, it is no longer something to be feared—in Pulter’s poem a nuanced struggle unfolds between one’s spiritual beliefs about death and its material realities: death is a release only for the redeemed Christian soul.
For more about Pulter’s depictions of Death and death, see the following Curations: Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Dear Death, Helen Smith’s The Good Death and Memento Mori, Elisa Tersigni’s Personified Death in Early Modern Art and Literature, and Wendy Wall’s Talking to Death. For more on the speaker’s desire for death, see Frances E. Dolan’s Desiring Death and More Ruminations on Death and Resurrection.
Amplified Edition
Line number 1

 Critical note

Pulter also opens The Hope [Poem 65] with “Dear Death”. For more on this opening, see Elizabeth Scott-Baumann’s Curation, Dear Death.
Amplified Edition
Line number 1

 Critical note

“Thou’rt” is read as a single syllable to keep the metre of the line.
Amplified Edition
Line number 2

 Critical note

This line echoes John Donne’s Devotions vpon emergent occasions (London, 1624): “Any Mans death diminishes me, because I am inuolued in Mankinde; And therefore neuer send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” In early modern England, bells were rung to mark a person’s impending death, their moment of passing, and their funeral.
Amplified Edition
Line number 3

 Critical note

Early modern European bells had a minor overtone, giving them an inherently melancholic sound. By posing the statement that the bell sounds sweet as a question, the speaker underscores its ironic description and highlights her uncertainty. Leah Knight’s and Wendy Wall’s Elemental Edition punctuates this phrase with an exclamation mark although the manuscript has a question mark. While the syntax is indeed typical of an exclamatory statement, it is nevertheless possible to retain the original punctuation without disrupting the internal coherence of the poem: questions in English are usually formed with the verb “to do” (i.e., “how sweet does it sound?” or “does it sound sweet?”) but they can also be formed simply by adding a question mark to a statement, with a change of intonation. The effect of this is usually to undermine the equivalent statement by expressing surprise or doubt. “How sweet it sounds?” can therefore be read as a surprised or doubtful response to an implied statement “How sweet it sounds!” This sense of surprise or doubt is perhaps caused by the contrast between the sound of a bell ringing for death and the idea of its sounding sweet. This seeming contradiction is then reinforced by the following “trust mee”.
Elemental Edition
Line number 6

 Critical note

Pronounce as one syllable (i.e., “t’our”) to maintain meter.
Amplified Edition
Line number 7

 Critical note

The interlinear addition of “then” completes the metre.
Elemental Edition
Line number 8

 Gloss note

converted to stone
Amplified Edition
Line number 8

 Gloss note

Hardened to stone.
Elemental Edition
Line number 10

 Gloss note

freed from confinement or subjection
Amplified Edition
Line number 10

 Gloss note

Made free.
Amplified Edition
Line number 12

 Critical note

To keep the metre of the line, “heaven” can be read as a single syllable (“heav’n”).
Elemental Edition
Line number 13

 Gloss note

enveloped, entangled
Amplified Edition
Line number 13

 Critical note

Words with an “ed” ending, such as “involved”, can be pronounced in multiple ways: emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv-èd), which adds an additional syllable to the word, or not emphasizing the “ed” (i.e., in-volv’d); these alternate pronunciations are convenient for writing in pentameter. While the convention in early modern English poetry is to syllabize the “ed” ending when it is written as such (i.e., “involved”) and not when it is written using an apostrophe in place of the “e” (i.e., “involv’d”), poets do not always adhere to this convention. In her Curation Manuscript Ambiguities, Liza Blake argues that Pulter’s manuscript is written in two different hands: Pulter’s own hand and that of her scribe; “The Welcom” (Poem 19) is written in the latter. Both hands are inconsistent in their spellings of past participles. Compare, for instance, “troubled” in line 1 and “involv’d” in line 13: to keep the metre of the lines, both “ed” endings are not pronounced, and yet they are spelled differently.
Transcription
Line number 14

 Physical note

“ain” written over other indiscernible letters
Elemental Edition
Line number 14

 Gloss note

treachery, trap, followers, artillery, manner of action, or consequences
Amplified Edition
Line number 14

 Critical note

While in early modern Europe, personified Death was presented as male, female, or neuter, Pulter uses gendered pronouns to refer to Death in only six poems, three of which use the pronoun "she". Dear God, Turn Not Away Thy Face [Poem 20] and My Soul, Why Art Thou Full of Trouble? [Poem 40] also describe Death as feminine.
Amplified Edition
Line number 14

 Gloss note

“A number of people following, accompanying, or attending on a person, usually one of high rank of importance” (OED). It is not clear of what or whom Death’s train is composed. In “Death be not proud,” Donne’s Death dwells “with poyson, warre, and sicknesse.” Death’s train here may likewise be composed of people or of other personifications, perhaps of the grief and pain of the poem’s final line.
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