‘Upon a Wasp’ by Edward Taylor (1642-1729)

The bear that breathes the northern blast
Did numb, torpedo-like, a wasp
Whose stiffened limbs encramped, lay bathing
In Sol's warm breath and shine as saving,
Which with her hands she chafes and stands
Rubbing her legs, shanks, thighs, and hands.
Her pretty toes, and fingers' ends
Nipped with this breath, she out extends
Unto the sun, in great desire
To warm her digits at that fire. 10
Doth hold her temples in this state
Where pulse doth beat, and head doth ache.
Doth turn, and stretch her body small,
Doth comb her velvet capital.
As if her little brain pan were
A volume of choice precepts clear.
As if her satin jacket hot
Contained apothecary's shop
Of nature's receipts, that prevails
To remedy all her sad ails, 20
As if her velvet helmet high
Did turret rationality.
She fans her wing up to the wind
As if her pettycoat were lined,
With reason's fleece, and hoists sails
And humming flies in thankful gales
Unto her dun curled palace hall
Her warm thanks offering for all.

Lord, clear my misted sight that I
May hence view Thy divinity, 30
Some sparks whereof thou up dost hasp
Within this little downy wasp
In whose small corporation we
A school and a schoolmaster see,
Where we may learn, and easily find
A nimble spirit bravely mind
Her work in every limb: and lace
It up neat with a vital grace,

Acting each part though ne'er so small
Here of this fustian animal. 40
Till I enravished climb into
The Godhead on this ladder do,
Where all my pipes inspired upraise
An heavenly music furred with praise.

Considering the Poem

If, to begin, you scan this poem as a first step without becoming involved with the details of description, fascinating though they are, you see that it is made from two episodes: the first takes us from the apparent frozen death of a wasp to the creature’s restoration as it rises in a renewed life into the warming air and flies its way towards its nest, its true home, its ‘palace hall’ (27). The second, shorter episode is one in which the author looks forward in imagination to his own apparent death and then to his restoration to a new, true life as he rises in an ‘enravished climb’ (41) to God. It is feat of thought and imagination to effect a comparison between two such radically dissimilar beings, a wasp and a man, and to make the sustained comparison into a statement about life, the unreality of death, and resurrection.

The crux of the comparison is in the idea that even a lowly, strangely-made wasp, in its being, shares with our New England poet and pastor, the ‘sparks’ (31) of divinity. The word ‘Lord’ which starts the second episode indicates that the poet, turning away from the wasp and looking to heaven, begins a prayer - one that is informed by what he has learned from his sustained observation of the poor insect. Edward Taylor prays for a cleansing of his vision so that he is able to understand fully the divine fire of life that burns in the humble wasp just as it does in him. He wants to learn from the ‘schoolmaster’ (34) insect about God’s ‘vital grace’ (38) at work in the world. This insight about the working of grace in creation is, in itself, a spiritual rebirth, at least in terms of the poet’s new understanding. It is also a sign of the ‘upraise’ (43) to come after death.

The wasp has been frozen to the very point of death by exposure to the north wind. (The Bear referred to here is, of course, the constellation in the cold northern sky.) Taylor takes us through the process of the insect’s recovery with a thorough, concentrated attention to the tiniest detail, working from the general shape of the wasp’s body (2), through a series of closer and closer inspections of the physical signs of the insect’s coming back to life and culminating in the wasp’s ‘brain pan’ (15). It’s important from the poet’s point of view, given what he is trying to achieve in the comparison between man and beast on which the poem is based, to engage our sympathy for this unloved insect. For the poem to work, we must, like the author, first see ‘vital grace’ in the wasp and then feel compassion for its suffering (in the same way as God, Taylor knows, will feel compassion for him, another insignificant creature).

The exquisite delicacy of the detail about the recovering movements stimulates our pity, as does the way that the wasp’s body is described in human terms in the first episode. Taylor’s concentration on the texture and the feel or touch of things also has a direct effect on our sensory grasp of the insect’s life and body; he wants us to feel the body of the insect, to sink our identity into it, and so selects sense words that do that work for him: the wasp ‘chafes’ (5); its head is ‘velvet’ (14); its body is covered with ‘satin’ (17); its petticoat is lined with reason’s ‘fleece’; it is ‘downy’ (32); it is an animal made of the course, clothing fabric ‘fustian’ (40). Because we know the creature, we can sympathize and can accept it as an example of God’s graceful work in a world of suffering and death.

Our guided movement through the detail and our developing sympathy for the tiny creature are facilitated by the easy and methodical movement of the verse itself. Many of the verse lines run on into the following line unimpeded by the stops of strong (or any) end of line punctuation so we sense a conversational, open-ended and engaging manner in the poet’s relationship with us. But the poem feels more open than, actually, it is. After all, it’s very methodical in terms of line length and the number of beats, or stressed syllables, in each line; it also uses a fixed scheme of couplet rhymes (or sometimes half-rhymes). The proof that the balance between openness and control works is the engagement we feel with the insect. When Taylor is certain that his enchantment has worked on us, he can move from the descriptive episode to the reflective verse paragraph and the culminating prayer.

The poem ends with the curious phrase ‘furred with praise’ that is used to define the pipes of heavenly music accompanying his ‘upraise’ into new life. The word ‘furred’ is used in fabrication and construction to refer to the lining of a wood or metal surface to make it smooth. It fits perfectly, then, with the manufacture of the organ pipes to which Taylor is, presumably, referring. Even more perfectly though, in terms of this particular text, the word is the climax of the texture images in the poem and, as well, it links, or even conflates, the two risings in the poem, of the downy wasp and the man so ‘we’ (35) can learn, as the poet did, that, if God’s grace works in the tiny, insignificant speck of life lived by the wasp, it lives also in our lives and we may, therefore, have hope.