poem appears original more because it developes
an image that is no longer familiar to us than
because of anything that is bold or especially
impressive in the way the image is handled.
Once we recover some sense of what a spinning
wheel was, the association of this implement
with man and the conversion of man into the
implement of God is likely to seem a bit perfunc-
tory. Every part of the cloth making process has
simply been given a point-for-point resemblance
to God’s moral re-fabrication of the total self.
And the somewhat dogged quality of the whole
is perhaps indicated by its openness to being
parodied.Make me, O Lord, thy Printing Press
compleateorMake Me, O Lord, thy Coach and
Four compleate. One feels that, with a minimum
of ingenuity, the parts of these contrivances
could also be itemized into symbols, and item-
ized in such a way that not much in Taylor’s
conception would need to be sacrificed.
Judged by the terms of our discussion, then,
‘‘Huswifery’’ would appear to be one of those
relatively rare instances where Taylor employs
the allegorical mode throughout. And the accu-
racy of calling the poem allegorical depends not
only upon the kind of image that is presented; it
derives as well from the thematic uses to which
this image is put. What Taylor says about sov-
ereignty is, for example, not essentially unlike
the thought of Job—
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
and are spent without hope
—or the idea set forth in a well known hymn:
Have Thine own way, Lord, have Thine own
way,
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay....
Nor does his figure function much differ-
ently from the one devised by Mark Twain,
when in the bitterness of his old age he asked
What Is Man?, and answered that man is a sew-
ing machine, upon whose foot pedals the Fates
pump and press in order to spell out his destiny.
Nor, finally, is the operation of his spinning
wheel beyond comparing with the similar,
though better, trope that appears in Chapter 93
ofMoby Dick, where Pip, maddened by life at
sea, descends to the source of all experience, and
beholds God’s foot busily at work on the trea-
dles of the loom. Among these conceptions,
there is room—mutatis mutandis!—for a variety
of responses to God, a large number of different
attitudes toward His moral nature and toward
the part He plays in human affairs. The point is,
however, that the shaping of the conceptions has
in every case been about identical. It would seem
that, early and late, the invisible Operator and
the visible machine have struck writers as being
perfect emblems through which to express the
relationship between divine power and the impo-
tence of man.
For note that thisisthe relationship described
by ‘‘Huswifery.’’ Its speaker can progress toward
Glory, only if God first consents to set him in
motion. Unless divine intervention occurs, the
speaker will be morally static; he must remain
fixed and helpless, like an unworked wheel. In
short, the direction of the poem is determined by
its allegorical symbol: a symbol which points
steadily downward from the majestic and quite
arbitrary God who does things, to man’s utter
dependency in the world below.
And it is this sense of human triviality—this
creation of a metaphor that abases man and
shows, ironically, just how uncreative man is
when considered apart from God—which I
now wish to contrast with the tone and technique
in the first half of Taylor’s ‘‘Preface to Gods
Determinations Concerning His Elect’’:
Infinity, when all things it beheld
In Nothing, and of Nothing all did build,
Upon what base was fixt the Lath, wherein
He turn’d this Globe, and riggalld it so trim?
Who blew the Bellows of his Furnace Vast?
Or held the Mould wherein the world was cast?
Who laid its Corner Stone? Or whose
Command?
Where stand the Pillars upon which it stands?
Who Lac’de and Fillitted the Earth so fine,
With Rivers, like greenRibbons Smaragdine?
Who made the Sea’s its Selvedge and it locks
Like a Quilt Ball within a Silver Box?
Who Spread its Canopy? Or Curtains Spun?IT WOULD SEEM THAT, EARLY AND LATE, THE
INVISIBLE OPERATOR AND THE VISIBLEMACHINE HAVE STRUCK WRITERS AS BEING PERFECT
EMBLEMS THROUGH WHICH TO EXPRESS THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIVINE POWER AND THE
IMPOTENCE OF MAN.’’Huswifery