The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor by Edward Taylor
The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor is a significant collection of poetry by Edward Taylor, an influential Puritan minister in New England during the 17th century. His poetry remained largely unpublished for over two centuries due to Taylor's own wishes, which directed that his works not be released until after his death. The manuscript containing his poetry was eventually donated to Yale University and published in 1939, revealing Taylor's rich lyrical style, which is characterized by metaphysical elements similar to those of contemporaries like John Donne and George Herbert.
Among his works, the collection includes an extensive verse sequence titled "God's Determinations Touching His Elect," which engages deeply with themes of Calvinist theology, particularly the nature of grace and salvation. Taylor's writing is marked by its use of homely metaphors and complex conceits drawn from his New England environment. His well-known poem "Huswifery" employs the metaphor of spinning and weaving to express the desire to be transformed by divine grace.
Taylor's "Sacramental Meditations," written over several decades, showcase his poetic devotion and explore themes of love and spirituality, often referencing the passionate imagery found in the Song of Solomon. Despite the theological underpinnings, Taylor's poetry resonates with emotional depth and lyrical beauty, making him a pivotal figure in early American literature.
The Poetical Works of Edward Taylor by Edward Taylor
First published: 1939
Type of work: Poetry
Critical Evaluation:
Lord, let thy Glorious Body send such
Edward Taylor, an orthodox Puritan minister, was New England Puritanism’s sweetest singer before the Lord, but for more than two hundred years after his death his poems were unknown since he did not allow their publication and directed that his heirs should not publish them. The 400-page manuscript containing his poetical works was presented to Yale University in 1883 by Henry Wyllys Taylor. Thomas H. Johnson, a specialist in American literature, discovered the poems and received permission from the university to publish them. THE POETICAL WORKS OF EDWARD TAYLOR, published in 1939, contains what Mr. Johnson regards as the best of Taylor’s poems.
The POETICAL WORKS contains a long verse sequence titled “God’s Determinations Touching His Elect,” a group of five occasional poems, and selected poems from two long series of “Sacramental Meditations.” “God’s Determinations” is largely in dialogue form; and the speakers—Mercy, Justice, Christ, Satan, the Soul, and a Saint—are reminiscent of characters in early English morality plays. The several poems in the sequence are written in a variety of stanzaic patterns; and the style (as in all of Taylor’s poems) is that of the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poets like John Donne and George Herbert. The lines abound in homely comparisons and metaphors drawn from New England life and in extravagant conceits which are a distinguishing mark of all metaphysical poetry.
This long work, which embodies a contest between Christ and Satan for mankind, is typically Puritan in thought in that it attempts to justify the Calvinistic doctrine of the Covenant. According to this doctrine, God made a covenant with Adam that he and his descendants would possess eternal happiness if they did not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By disobeying, Adam and Eve lost their immunity to suffering and death. But through a new Covenant of Grace, God gave men another chance to save themselves from condemnation. If they would believe in Christ, who had willingly died for them, certain elect souls would be saved. They would not really earn this salvation through any good works they might do, but they would receive it out of God’s abounding grace. No one knew how many of these elect there were, but each believer in Christ might hope that he was included.
Though Calvinism, greatly modified, is still present in the doctrines of many of the Protestant churches of today, most modern readers find tedious the long discussions of grace, faith, redemption, and damnation which course through the poetry and prose of the New England Puritans. For this reason, much of “God’s Determinations” is of less interest than Taylor’s other poems, in which the poet’s lyricism and fanciful turns of thought are not subdued or distracted by theological argument.
There is nothing to distinguish many of Taylor’s lines in “God’s Determinations” from the writing of perhaps a dozen of his poetizing Puritan contemporaries in America and England. Mercy’s reply to Justice, for example, concerning the respective fates of the Devil’s disciples and of the true believers is no more than rhymed Calvinism:
I will not onely from his Sin him free,
If Taylor were capable of nothing better than this, he would never have been hailed as America’s best poet before the appearance of William Cullen Bryant in the nineteenth century.
But Taylor possessed more than the inherent grace of Calvin’s theology; he was also gifted with the inherent grace (in a different sense) of the true poet. In the “Prologue” to “God’s Determinations,” he humbly seeks aid from the great God whom he would praise. He asks:
Lord, Can a Crumb of Earth the Earth
Even if this “Crumb of Earth” had an angel’s quill dipped in liquid gold, he says, “It would but blot and blur: yea, jag and jar,” unless God made both “Pen and Scribener.” He then admits that he himself is
this Crumb of Dust which is
He prays that God will not laugh to scorn his attempts and that He will overlook any failings as “being Slips slipt from thy Crumb of Dust.” If God will but guide his pen he may then write,
To Prove thou art, and that thou art
One of the most charming passages in “God’s Determinations” is found in the opening stanzas of Christ’s lengthy reply to a soul who “groans for succour” in his struggles against the fierce assaults of Satan, characterized as a cur who “bayghs and barks . . . veh’mently.” As Christ begins to speak, He is not God’s Son clothed in majesty or dignity but simply a loving father comforting a frightened child:
Peace, Peace, my Hony, do not Cry,
The cur barks, Christ explains, only because this soul belongs to Him, and “His barking is to make thee Cling/Close underneath thy Saviours wing.” To make it clear that fright is needless, Christ uses a simile from New England rural or village life:
As Spot barks back the sheep again,
Continuing with other endearing names (“Fear not, my Pritty Heart. . . . Why did my sweeten start?”), Christ even employs New England dialect:
And if he run an inch too fur,
Suddenly, in the next line, Christ’s language is transformed, and it is as though John Donne or George Herbert had taken over the pen to finish Taylor’s stanza for him:
The Poles shall sooner kiss and greet,
Of Taylor’s occasional poems included in the POETICAL WORKS, the best known (through many reprintings in anthologies) is “Huswifery,” a poem of three six-line stanzas of the type which Taylor uses in his “Sacramental Meditations.” Also, as in the “Meditations,” the whole poem develops a single “conceit” or extended metaphor. The poet prays to his Lord, “Make me . . . thy Spin[n]ing Wheele compleat,” and the process of becoming a Christian is described in terms of the making of clothing which he will wear. When, with Distaff (“Thy Holy Worde”), Swift Flyers (“mine Affections”), Spool (“my Soule”), and Reel (“My Conversation”), the yarn has been spun, the poet prays again:
Make me thy Loome then, knit therein
When the poet’s Understanding, Will, Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory, Words, and Actions have been dressed in this God-made cloth,
Then mine apparell shall display be-
Taylor’s “Sacramental Meditations” were written over a period of forty-four years, 1682 to 1725. His purpose in writing them is suggested in his complete manuscript title: “Preparatory Meditations before my Approach to the Lords Supper. Chiefly upon the Doctrin[e] preached upon the Day of administration.” Each meditation is in Taylor’s favorite six-line stanza, rhyming ababcc; and each is numbered, with a Biblical text to provide the theme. In view of the sensuousness in the language and imagery of so much of Taylor’s poetry—despite his Puritan religious orthodoxy—it is significant that of ninety-seven texts which he chose from the Old Testament, seventy-six are from the SONG OF SOLOMON (Taylor uses the alternate name Canticles), which is filled with the passion and imagery of Oriental love poetry. The orthodox interpretation of the book as an allegory describing Christ’s love for the Church permitted Taylor to return repeatedly to it without a twinge of his Puritan conscience, but the modern reader may wonder whether it was not Taylor’s own natural ardor which drew him so often to Canticles for his texts. Yet, reading the “Meditations,” one never questions the sincerity of his love for Christ in such lines as these:
Oh! that my Heart, thy Golden Harp
Though the “Sacramental Meditations” are often awkward and uneven in development and sometimes repetitious in phrasing or imagery, they form altogether a remarkable group of poems, filled with light and warmth and beauty and proclaiming the poet’s love for the Christ whom he served devotedly for so many years.