Love’s Last Knot

Richard Crashaw offers the hope of eternity for wedded love.

1646

Introduction

Richard Crashaw (1613-1649) was an Anglican clergyman and scholar who was forced into exile in France in 1643 for his traditional beliefs, after Oliver Cromwell captured Cambridge in the Civil War. In this short poem, he assures us that the bond of wedded love lasts to eternity. (Crashaw is pronounced cray-shaw.)

by Richard Crashaw 1613-1649

An Epitaph Upon Husband And Wife, Who died and were buried together.

TO these whom death again did wed,
This grave’s the second marriage-bed.
For though the hand of Fate could force
’Twixt soul and body a divorce,
It could not sever man and wife,
Because they both lived but one life.

Peace, good reader, do not weep;
Peace, the lovers are asleep.
They, sweet turtles, folded lie
In the last knot that love could tie.

Let them sleep, let them sleep on,
Till the stormy night be gone,
And the eternal morrow dawn;
Then the curtains will be drawn,
And they wake into a light
Whose day shall never die in night.

by Richard Crashaw 1613-1649

Précis

Crashaw, reflecting on the grave of a young couple, reminds us that while death may part soul and body, it cannot part two souls bound together in married love. For them, death is only a brief sleep before waking to share together in the sunrise of everlasting life.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

Love’s Last Knot

Introduction

Précis

Questions for Critics

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