Today’s Poem: Here and There

Reading Hannah More

Izaak van Oosten, Heaven on Earth, c. 1650 (Wikimedia Commons)

Here and There

by Hannah More

Here bliss is short, imperfect, insincere,
But total, absolute, and perfect there.
Here time’s a moment, short our happiest state,
There infinite duration is our date.
Here Satan tempts, and troubles ev’n the best,
There Satan’s power extends not to the blest.
In a weak sinful body here I dwell,
But there I drop this frail and sickly shell.
Here my best thoughts are stain’d with guilt and fear,
But love and pardon shall be perfect there.
Here my best duties are defil’d with sin,
There all is ease without and peace within.
Here feeble faith supplies my only light,
There faith and hope are swallow’d up in sight.
Here love of self my fairest works destroys,
There love of God shall perfect all my joys.
Here things, as in a glass, are darkly shown,
There I shall know as clearly as I’m known.
Frail are the fairest flowers which bloom below,
There freshest palms on roots immortal grow.
Here wants or cares perplex my anxious mind,
But spirits there a calm fruition find.
Here disappointments my best schemes destroy,
There those that sow’d in tears shall reap in joy.
Here vanity is stamp’d on all below.
Perfection there on every good shall grow.
Here my fond heart is fasten’d on some friend,
Whose kindness may, whose life must have an end;
But there no failure can I ever prove,
God cannot disappoint, for God is love.
Here Christ for sinners suffer’d, groan’d, and bled,
But there he reigns the great triumphant head:
Here, mock’d and scourg’d, he wore a crown of thorns,
A crown of glory there his brow adorns.
Here error clouds the will, and dims the sight,
There all is knowledge, purity, and light.
Here so imperfect is this mortal state,
If blest myself I mourn some other’s fate,
At every human woe I here repine,
The joy of every saint shall there be mine.
Here if I lean the world shall pierce my heart,
But there that broken reed and I shall part.
Here on no promis’d good can I depend,
But there the Rock of Ages is my friend.
Here if some sudden joy delight inspire,
The dread to lose it damps the rising fire;
But there whatever good the soul employ.
The thought that ’tis eternal crowns the joy.
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Joseph Bottum writes:

Karen Swallow Prior (b. 1965) is a well-known speaker and writer, contributing to such outlets as the New York Times, Atlantic, and Washington Post. She’s a widely published book author, including such recent volumes as You Have a Calling and The Evangelical Imagination, and she has a Substack newsletter that’s well worth your time.

Back in 2014, Prior also wrote a book called Fierce Convictions, about the neglected eighteenth-century British reformer Hannah More. So when we at Poems Ancient and Modern wondered whether More’s poetry was worth reviving, we naturally turned to our friend Karen Swallow Prior to guide us.

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Karen Swallow Prior writes:

Of all the poets you rarely hear of, Hannah More (1745–1833) may be among the most interesting. A British abolitionist and reformer, as well as a dramatist, essayist, and novelist, More was as popular in her lifetime as she was prolific. She wrote across literary genres, and she wrote for all social classes — a feat that, within her highly stratified society, was as rare as it was difficult. Her most remembered work today is the abolitionist poem “Slavery,” written in 1788 to assist her friend William Wilberforce in his efforts to persuade Parliament to pass anti-slavery legislation.

She often combined her efforts at social reform with her literary work. One of her most successful such projects was the Cheap Repository Tracts, a series (published mainly from 1795–1798) that offered affordable and instructive reading material to the poor. Among these readers were those that had been taught to read in the free schools More opened for laboring class. The Cheap Repository Tracts featured lively moral tales, helpful advice for domestic life and personal economy, and such religious poems as Today’s Poem, “Here and There,” with the (period-common) extension of a subtitle: “Or This World and the Next: Being Suitable Thoughts for the New Year.”

The new year referenced by the poem’s original subtitle is 1798. As the previous year closed, the French Revolution (its spirit always looming in Britain) was still raging. More’s friend Horace Walpole had died earlier in the year, followed by the death of her longtime acquaintance and fellow conservative Edmund Burke.

Perhaps More was thinking of these losses (she had had many others before, including a broken marriage engagement early in life) with the lines “Here my fond heart is fasten’d on some friend, / Whose kindness may, whose life must have an end.” But whatever personal burdens More carried into her writing, the poem clearly reflects her devout evangelical Christian faith as it points readers to eternal things.

An 1821 portrait of Hannah More (Wikimedia Commons)

Despite its pedantic purpose and its status as popular literature, “Here and There” has some complexities in versification and thought. Written in heroic couplets that swing between here on earth and there in heaven, the lines seek variety in their structure, rhythm, parallels, and contrasts. With a relatively simple vocabulary (suited to More’s target audience of newly literate readers) the poem expresses depth of thought — about, for example, the impossibility of perfect action in a fallen world — and uses biblical language throughout.

“Here and There” covers concerns of flesh and spirit before subtly funneling all these human matters toward Christ incarnate. With repetition of the word “crown,” the poem paints a picture of how Christ’s crown of thorns becomes a crown of glory, which, once we are there in heaven, crowns all our joys because they are eternal.

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