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Edward Taylor's Spiritual Huswifery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Norman S. Grabo
Norman S. Grabo*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley 4
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Extract

      Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheele compleate.
      Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.

      Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate
      And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee.
      My Conversation make to be thy Reele
      And reele the yarn thereon Spun of thy Wheele.

      Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Twine:
      And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde quills:

      Then weave the Web thyselfe. The yarn is fine.
      Thine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills.
      Then dy the Same in Heavenly Colours Choice,
      All pinkt with Varnisht Flowers of Paradise.

      Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will,
      Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory

      My Words, and Actions, that their shine may fill
      My wayes with glory and thee glorify.
      Then mine appareil shall display before yee
      That I am Cloathd in Holy robes for glory.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 1964 , pp. 554 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1907

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References

1 The Poems of Edward Taylor, ed. Donald E. Stanford (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1960). Quoted by permission of the copyright holder, Princeton Univ. Press, Poetical Works of Edward Taylor, ed. T. H. Johnson, 1943.

2 Thomas H. Johnson, “Edward Taylor: A Puritan ‘Sacred Poet’,” NEQ, x (June 1937), 291–292. Cf. Donald E. Stanford, ed., The Poems of Edward Taylor, p. 467. A second version of “Huswifery,” entitled “Another upon the Same” (Stanford, p. 468), I consider a variant and do not treat here as an independent poem.

3 The self-evidence, however, is conflicting. For Austin Warren the poem weaves “robes of salvation,” Rage for Order: Essays in Criticism (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1948), p. 14; cf. his headnote to “Huswifery,” Major Writers of America, ed. Perry Miller et al. (2 vols., New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), i, 66. For Roy Harvey Pearce, “Huswifery” bodies forth “God's way with man,” “Edward Taylor: The Poet as Puritan,” NEQ, xxiii (March 1950), 32. Emma L. Shepherd says “the theme of the whole poem is that God creates man in beauty to glorify His works; the basic conceit presents part of the theme—the creation and beauty of man,” “The Metaphysical Conceit in the Poetry of Edward Taylor” (unpubl. diss., North Carolina, 1960), p. 130. Thomas G. Wack suggests it is about the glorified or sanctified soul, “The Imagery of Edward Taylor's Preparatory Meditations” (unpubl. diss., Notre Dame, 1961), pp. 255, 256. And Elizabeth Wiley intimates that Taylor is “weaving the web of life” according to Christ's pattern, cf. “Sources of Imagery in the Poetry of Edward Taylor” (unpubl. diss., Pittsburgh, 1962), p. 83.

4 See Warren's headnote, Major Writers, i, 66; Norman S. Grabo, Edward Taylor (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1961), p. 156. Warren calls attention to Proverbs xxxi.10–31, “the Old Testament eulogy of the virtuous housewife”; Wiley points to Taylor's combination of Job xxix.14 with Matt. xxii.11–12 (p. 145), and incidentally cites clothing imagery drawn from Taylor's theological and devotional reading, pp. 149–150.

5 “This in a Letter I sent to my schoolfellow. W. M.,” “The Earliest Poems of Edward Taylor,” ed. Donald E. Stanford, AL, xxxii (May 1960), 147–148, ll. 17–24.

6 “My last Declamation in the Colledge Hall May 5, 1671, Where four Declaim'd in the Praise of four languages and five upon the five senses. Those upon the Languages Declaim'd in the Language they treated of: and hence mine ran in English,” ed. Donald E. Stanford, “An Edition of the Complete Poetical Works of Edward Taylor,” unpubl. diss., Stanford, 1953, pp. 7–11. Line numbers are run into the text. The poem is discussed in Grabo, pp. 96–97.

7 Cf. Edward Taylor's Christographia, ed. Norman S. Grabo (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1962), p. 371.

8 Cotton Mather, “Of Poetry and Style,” Manuductio ad Ministerium, cited in Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, eds., The Puritans (New York: American Book Co., 1938), p. 687.

8 “These for my truely deare and Endeared Mrs. Elizabeth Fitch mine Onely Love, in Norwich with Care ...,” in Stanford, “An Edition,” pp. 18–19, ll. 1–6. The poem is discussed in Shepherd, pp. 154–155; Wiley, p. 17.

10 Christographia, pp. 78–79; cf. the discussion of union and marriage in Grabo, Edward Taylor, pp. 69–81.

11 Stanford, Poems, p. 67, ll. 7–12. All subsequent quotations from the “Preparatory Meditations” are from this edition, where they are arranged by number in two series. Roman numerals in citations refer to series i or ii.

12 Wack makes a similar observation, p. 222.

13 Louis L. Martz, “Foreword,” in Stanford, Poems, pp. xxi-xxiii; Grabo, Edward Taylor, pp. 139–141.

14 The relationship of Taylor's sermons to his poems is fully developed in my introduction to the Christographia, pp. xxxiii-xliv. Wiley notes the relevance of righteousness to Taylor's robe image, but only in one poem, pp. 145–146.

15 Stoddard's contribution to the Great Awakening and revivalism techniques is glanced at in Perry Miller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening,” Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1956), esp. p. 160; his work is treated thoroughly in Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1953), pp. 226–287. The history of Taylor's involvement with Stoddard is summarized in Grabo, Edward Taylor, pp. 31–39; and “ ‘The Appeale Tried’: Another Edward Taylor Manuscript,” AL, xxxiv (Nov. 1962), 394–400.

16 This 190-page holograph, untitled, is contained in a manuscript book entitled “Extracts, by Rev. Edward Taylor, Westfield,” in the Boston Public Library: see The Prince Library: A Catalogue of the Collections of Books and Manuscripts ... (Boston, 1870), p. 159. Its contents are reviewed briefly in Grabo, Edward Taylor, pp. 34–36. Page references in the text are to this manuscript.

17 George Williamson, The Donne Tradition (New York: The Noonday Press, Inc., 1958), p. 88.

18 Wiley, p. 82.

19 “Treatise,” pp. 151–152, 155.