In Edward Taylor's "Meditation 42," the speaker employs a tone of both desire and anxiousness in order to convey the overall idea that man's sinful nature and spiritual unworthiness require God's grace and forgiveness to gain entrance to the kingdom of heaven.
In the opening stanza, the speaker describes the human craving and longing for material objects. From the very first word of "Meditation 42," a sense of longing and desire infuses the poem as "apples" (ll. 1) often symbolize both temptation and desire. Because Eve allowed the lure of attaining the God's knowledge to overtake her in the book of Genesis, she bites from a fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which is commonly depicted as an apple. In addition, because the "apples" allude to man's fall from paradise they thereby represent man's imperfection and sinful nature. Furthermore, the fact that "apples of gold in silver pictures shrined" (ll. 1) emphasizes the desire or lust for physical, material items of beauty and wealth. These items "enchant" (ll. 2) as the "gold" and "silver" appeal to mankind's covetous nature and tendency to value superficial items. Thus, the speaker conveys his longing and desire for physical riches which "enchant" him. Yet his want for treasures exist as strictly human desire, causing physical consequences as they "make mouths to water" (ll. 2).
However, despite the monetary value of precious metals, attaining such superficial items does not allow man to gain any true fulfillment. For example, in the opening stanza, all the treasures "In jasper cask, when tapped, doth briskly vapor" (ll. 4). The material items mean nothing in the larger scheme of the world and therefore "briskly vapor" and disapp...
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..., but still pleads for God to "take me in" (ll. 41), and promises to "pay...in happiness" for mercy. Once again, the speaker demonstrates the same desires for physical treasures that he expresses in the first stanza as he asks God to "give mine eye / A peephole there to see bright glory's chases" (ll. 39-40). Even in the God's kingdom, the speaker reveals his humanity as he focuses on ornamentation which starkly contrasts with God's divinity as He has the ability to show love even for sinners.
Thus, while man shows his human nature, desiring and coveting physical riches and treasures, God demonstrates his truly divine nature as he possesses true spiritual riches, in the form of love, mercy, and forgiveness.
Works Cited
Taylor, Edward. “Meditation 42.” The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lautier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Paul Lauter. Boston: Houghton, 1998. 1578-1690.
All of this is brought to the reader by an abundant use of figurative language throughout the song. For Instance, the scaffold the man is standing on symbolizes his position in life (he is scared and wants to escape. In the third stanza, after describing the problems with his world and how he prays, he curses the windstorms. This is actually a metaphor for his mental confusion and despair. In the next stanza, the prestige of the boardroom is made evident by the allusion of it towards a pharoahs tomb. We know in the end that he has pulled it all together when he calls his “crystal clear canvas” (the windows) a “masterpiece” . He has given value to his work and thus, value to his life.
6th ed. New York: St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Jan. 2014.
Spirit), the nature of man and the need for salvation, and sin and the means of atonement.
The early white settlers had a hard time defying their own sinful desires and striving for holiness. This was especially seen in the works of Edward Taylor, who was a puritan pastor during the early days of America. In his poem, I Am the Living Bread, he mentioned, “This Wicker Cage (my Corps) to tweedle praise Had peckt the Fruite forbad: and so did fling Away its Food; and lost its golden dayes;” In this context, Edward Taylor is struggling to defy sin that his body offers because it will kill him eventually, and strives to acquire the grace of God that would sustain him. In
"A Separate Peace." Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Vol. 3. New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1993.
Moore, Dinty W. The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still. 1st ed. Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 1997. Print.
“the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,” (13-14), “the dead know not anything for the memory of them is forgotten?” (39-40), “live joyfully all the days of the life of thy vanity, that is thy portion in this life?” (59-60). These words are to be words of comfort, but they fall short. In the seventh stanza, Jarman describes how the preacher is overcome with emotion when the parents show him their daughter’s room, “What if an act of mercy so acute it pierced the preacher’s skull and travels the length of his spine…” (49-50). This was a realization for the preacher that he could not say anything to truly comfort the
Carver, Raymond. Cathedral. “The Norton Introduction to Literature.” New York: W.W Norton &, 2014. Print.
..., not only will we acknowledge the needs of others by redeeming ourselves from sensuality, but avoid being prideful by acknowledging how unessential material wealth is in our own lives. When we do this we will break out of the the “competitive rat-race without meaning”, or the “vicious circle” (Arrupe 10), by choosing God’s love and the love for others.
While we possess thee, thy changes ever lovely, thy vernal airs or majestic storms, thy vast creation spread at our feet, above, around us, how can we call ourselves unhappy? There is a brotherhood in the growing, opening flowers, love in the soft winds, repose in the verdant expanse, and a quick spirit of happy life throughout, with which our souls hold glad communion; but the poor prisoner was barred from these: how cumbrous the body felt, how alien to the inner spirit of man, the fleshy bars that allowed it to become slave of his fellows
Levine, Robert S. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th Edition. Volume B. New York: Norton, 2007. 1696. Print.
Baym, Nina, and Robert S. Levine, eds. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. 8th ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. Print.
Ziolkowski, Theodore. "Siddhartha: The Landscape of the Soul." Hesse Companion. Ed. Anna Otten. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970. 71-100. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 196. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 25 Nov. 2013.
At the start of the play, God criticizes the way that “all creatures” are not serving him properly. He dislikes that people live without fear in the world or with any thought of heaven or hell. “In worldly riches is all their mind” God claims. “Every man liveth so after his own pleasure”, and only God realizes the decaying of the world and decides to “have a reckoning of every man’s person”.