I’m interested in the “spatiality” of this: here and there are places, where the conceit of the poem, drawing as it does on 1 Corinthians 13:12, ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known’—specifically referenced in lines 17-18—might lead us to expect a temporal comparison: after all, the heavenly reward to which the poem is half devoted is something that will come in our future, but is not now. And the poem opens with observations on temporal brevity (line 1), and then a couplet specifically contrasting the temporal logics of this world and the next: ‘Here time’s a moment, short our happiest state,/There infinite duration is our date’. But the tenses of the poem shift about: present tense for here, ‘in a weak sinful body here I dwell’, but also present tense for the hereafter: ‘but there I drop this frail and sickly shell’—except that in the next couplet her thoughts are, present tense, stained, whereas ‘there’ they shall be, future tense, perfect.
The poem gives us six constructions of present-tense here/future-tense there, but I can’t discern a pattern in them:
1. Here my best thoughts are stain’d with guilt and fear, / But love and pardon shall be perfect there.
2. Here love of self my fairest works destroys, / There love of God shall perfect all my joys.
3. Here things, as in a glass, are darkly shown, / There I shall know as clearly as I’m known.
4. Here disappointments my best schemes destroy, / There those that sow’d in tears shall reap in joy.
5. Here vanity is stamp’d on all below. / Perfection there on every good shall grow.
6. At every human woe I here repine, / The joy of every saint shall there be mine.
And how are we to fit in the couplet that gives us: “Here if I lean the world shall pierce my heart, / But there that broken reed and I shall part”?
Assuming More was not just filling in the meter but in control enough to intend something with this varying tensing — a bigger assumption than I may be willing to make — its message is beyond me.
I love the parallelism between the here and there. My kind of poem. This world is not our home.
This is a real find. Thank you. The couplet is intrinsically suited to epigrams, and this is a feast of excellent ones on the one theme.
@Salt and Light Stories
I’m interested in the “spatiality” of this: here and there are places, where the conceit of the poem, drawing as it does on 1 Corinthians 13:12, ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known’—specifically referenced in lines 17-18—might lead us to expect a temporal comparison: after all, the heavenly reward to which the poem is half devoted is something that will come in our future, but is not now. And the poem opens with observations on temporal brevity (line 1), and then a couplet specifically contrasting the temporal logics of this world and the next: ‘Here time’s a moment, short our happiest state,/There infinite duration is our date’. But the tenses of the poem shift about: present tense for here, ‘in a weak sinful body here I dwell’, but also present tense for the hereafter: ‘but there I drop this frail and sickly shell’—except that in the next couplet her thoughts are, present tense, stained, whereas ‘there’ they shall be, future tense, perfect.
The poem gives us six constructions of present-tense here/future-tense there, but I can’t discern a pattern in them:
1. Here my best thoughts are stain’d with guilt and fear, / But love and pardon shall be perfect there.
2. Here love of self my fairest works destroys, / There love of God shall perfect all my joys.
3. Here things, as in a glass, are darkly shown, / There I shall know as clearly as I’m known.
4. Here disappointments my best schemes destroy, / There those that sow’d in tears shall reap in joy.
5. Here vanity is stamp’d on all below. / Perfection there on every good shall grow.
6. At every human woe I here repine, / The joy of every saint shall there be mine.
And how are we to fit in the couplet that gives us: “Here if I lean the world shall pierce my heart, / But there that broken reed and I shall part”?
Assuming More was not just filling in the meter but in control enough to intend something with this varying tensing — a bigger assumption than I may be willing to make — its message is beyond me.