{"id":1538,"date":"2009-12-24T18:24:55","date_gmt":"2009-12-24T18:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=1538"},"modified":"2009-12-24T18:24:55","modified_gmt":"2009-12-24T18:24:55","slug":"poem-josephs-amazement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/poem-josephs-amazement\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem: Joseph's Amazement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following Michael Dransfield’s poem about conflicted love<\/a>, I remembered a seasonally-appropriate poem written four centuries before:\u00a0 Robert Southwell’s Joseph’s Amazement<\/em>, which imagines the torment and self-questioning Mary’s husband would have felt to discover that Mary was pregnant.\u00a0 Southwell moves between first and third persons to describe Joseph’s anguish, which he does not resolve, instead ending in a similar place of uncertain quandary to Dransfield.\u00a0 Perhaps this lack of resolution is another reason Southwell’s poetry sounds so modern, and so fresh.<\/p>\n

Joseph’s Amazement <\/em>
\nWhen Christ, by growth, disclosed his descent
\nInto the pure receipt of Mary’s breast
\nPoor Joseph, stranger yet to God’s intent,
\nWith doubts of jealous thoughts was sore oppressed
\nAnd, wrought with diverse fits of fear and love,
\nHe neither can her free nor faulty prove.
\nNow sense, the wakeful spy of jealous mind,
\nBy strong conjectures deemeth her defiled,
\nBut love, in doom of things best loved blind,
\nThinks rather sense deceived than her with child
\nYet proofs so pregnant were that no pretence
\nCould cloak a thing so dear and plain to sense.
\nThen Joseph, daunted with a deadly wound,
\nLet loose the reins to undeserved grief.
\nHis heart did throb, his eyes in tears were drowned,
\nHis life a loss, death seemed his best relief.
\nThe pleasing relish of his former love
\nIn gallish thoughts to bitter taste doth prove.
\nOne foot he often setteth forth of door
\nBut t’other’s loath uncertain ways to tread.
\nHe takes his fardel for his needful store,
\nHe casts his Inn where first he means to bed.
\nBut still ere he can frame his feet to go,
\nLove winneth time till all conclude in no.
\nSometime, grief adding force, he doth depart.
\nHe will, against his will, keep on his pace.
\nBut straight remorse so racks his ruing heart,
\nThat hasting thoughts yield to a pausing space;
\nThen mighty reasons press him to remain.
\nShe whom he flies doth win him home again.
\nBut when his thought, by sight of his abode,
\nPresents the sign of mis-esteemed shame,
\nRepenting every step that back he trod,
\nTears drown the guides; the tongue, the feet doth blame.
\nThus warring with himself a field he fights,
\nWhere every wound upon the giver lights.
\n“And was my love,” quoth he, “so lightly prized?
\nOr was our sacred league so soon forgot?
\nCould vows be void, could virtues be despised?
\nCould such a spouse be stained with such a spot?”
\nO wretched Joseph that hast lived so long,
\nOf faithful love to reap so grievous wrong.
\nCould such a worm breed in so sweet a wood?
\nCould in so chaste demeanour lurk untruth?
\nCould vice lie hid where virtue’s image stood?
\nWhere hoary sageness graced tender youth?
\nWhere can affiance rest to rest secure?
\nIn virtue’s fairest seat faith is not sure.
\nAll proofs did promise hope, a pledge of grace,
\nWhose good might have repaid the deepest ill.
\nSweet signs of purest thoughts in saintly face
\nAssured the eye of her unstained will.
\nYet in this seeming lustre seem to lie
\nSuch crimes for which the law condemns to die.
\nBut Joseph’s word shall never work her woe:
\n“I wish her leave to live, not doom to die.
\nThough fortune mine, yet am I not her foe,
\nShe to herself less loving is than I.
\nThe most I will, the lest I can, is this,
\nSith none may salve, to shun that is amiss.
\nExile my home, the wilds shall be my walk,
\nComplaints my joy, my music mourning lays,
\nWith pensive griefs in silence will I talk;
\nSad thoughts shall be my guides in sorrow’s ways.
\nThis course best suits the care of cureless mind,
\nThat seeks to lose what most it joyed to find.
\nLike stocked tree whose branches all do fade,
\nWhose leaves do fall, and perished fruit decay,
\nLike herb that grows in cold and barren shade,
\nWhere darkness drives all quick’ning heat away,
\nSo must I die, cut from my root of joy,
\nAnd thrown in darkest shades of deep annoy.
\nBut who can fly from that his heart doth feel?
\nWhat change of place can change implanted pain?
\nRemoving moves no hardness from the steel.
\nSick hearts that shift no fits, shift rooms in vain.
\nWhere thought can see, what helps the closed eye?
\nWhere heart pursues, what gains the foot to fly?
\nYet still I tread a maze of doubtful end.
\nI go, I come, she draws, she drives away,
\nShe wounds, she heals, she doth both mar and mend,
\nShe makes me seek and shun, depart and stay.
\nShe is a friend to love, a foe to loathe,
\nAnd in suspense I hang between them both.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Notes and Reference:<\/em>
\nA fardel<\/em> is a package.\u00a0 Affiance <\/em>is a binding marriage pledge.\u00a0 I have modernized the spelling and added punctuation.\u00a0\u00a0 Previous poems by Robert Southwell are here<\/a> and here<\/a>.
\nRobert Southwell [2007]: Collected Poems<\/em>. Edited by Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney. Manchester, UK: Fyfield Books, pp. 19-21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following Michael Dransfield’s poem about conflicted love, I remembered a seasonally-appropriate poem written four centuries before:\u00a0 Robert Southwell’s Joseph’s Amazement, which imagines the torment and self-questioning Mary’s husband would have felt to discover that Mary was pregnant.\u00a0 Southwell moves between first and third persons to describe Joseph’s anguish, which he does not resolve, instead ending […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","category-religion","p1","y2009","m12","d24","h18"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}