Henry King: Poem analysis » The Exequy » Commentary on The Exequy

The Exequy is divided into sections rather like paragraphs. The thought moves through these sections, gradually moving from complaint to some sort of consolation. The poem is a Christian one, as we might expect from a minister of religion, though just as doctors cannot always heal themselves, so the clergy cannot always comfort themselves.

A universal poem

The first thing the poet notices in his profound grief is how slowly time goes by. This is a universal poem, in that King takes a near universal experience, and accurately chronicles it through a series of brilliant and fitting images. He is describing a common experience in bereavement:

I find out
How lazily time creeps about.

The short lines and the rhyme make it memorable. Time indeed seems to go backward, for what was day has now gone back to night. She was his ‘cleer Sun’, now gone into ‘a strange eclipse’ since the earth stands between him and her. The image is brilliant in its simplicity.

The hope of resurrection

If only King could comfort himself with the thought that she would return. Even if he had to wait ten years,

I would thy exile live till then

But these are ‘empty hopes’. The imagery of exile will not work. He will have to wait till the final resurrection. More on the Resurrection of the Dead?

Once King has reached a point of acceptance he has to consign her to the grave. He demands of it that it shall keep an account of her, as if it were the executor or an accountant. Finally, he addresses her directly again: she has reached death first. From now on, he will see his life as a journey towards death. This will give some shape to time, and some sense of its forward movement. Every day will bring him a step nearer. His pulse will act ‘like a soft Drum’.

This is his only consolation:

The thought of this bids me go on
… I am content to live
Divided,

By ‘divided’ he means both separated from her and with his attention divided between life and death. There is now hope that ‘we shall meet and never part’.

Investigating The Exequy

Read through King’s The Exequy
- Explain ‘Thou like the Vann first took'st the field’
- Collect together words and phrases to do with time
  - What do you notice?
- Note words associated with the death of the physical body and its burial

Name originally given to disciples of Jesus by outsiders and gradually adopted by the Early Church.

A particular system of belief, faith and worship ' for example, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism.

The collective term for priests and ministers of the church (as opposed to the non-ordained laity).

1. Imitation, copy, likeness, statue, picture in literature, art or imagination. 2. A figure of speech in which a person or object or happening is described in terms of some other person, object or action (i.e. as a metaphor or simile)

The device, frequently used at the ends of lines in poetry, where words with the same sound are paired, sometimes for contrast ' for example, 'breath' and 'death'.

Figure of speech in which a person or object or happening is described in terms of some other person, object or action, either by saying X is Y (metaphor); or X is like Y (simile). In each case, X is the original, Y is the image.

Literally, rising to life again. In the Bible it is specifically applied to Jesus Christ's coming to life after his crucifixion; and from thence, to the hope of all believers that after death, they will be raised to a new life in heaven.

Accept, thou shrine of my dead saint,
Instead of dirges, this complaint;
And for sweet flowers to crown thy hearse,
Receive a strew of weeping verse
From thy grieved friend, whom thou might'st see
Quite melted into tears for thee.
Dear loss! since thy untimely fate
My task hath been to meditate
On thee, on thee; thou art the book,
The library whereon I look,
Though almost blind. For thee, loved clay,
I languish out, not live, the day,
Using no other exercise
But what I practise with mine eyes;
By which wet glasses I find out
How lazily time creeps about
To one that mourns; this, only this,
My exercise and business is.
So I compute the weary hours
With sighs dissolvëd into showers.
Nor wonder if my time go thus
Backward and most preposterous;
Thou hast benighted me; thy set
This eve of blackness did beget,
Who wast my day, though overcast
Before thou hadst thy noon-tide past;
And I remember must in tears,
Thou scarce hadst seen so many years
As day tells hours. By thy clear sun
My love and fortune first did run;
But thou wilt never more appear
Folded within my hemisphere,
Since both thy light and motïon
Like a fled star is fall'n and gone;
And 'twixt me and my soul's dear wish
An earth now interposëd is,
Which such a strange eclipse doth make
As ne'er was read in almanac.
I could allow thee for a time
To darken me and my sad clime;
Were it a month, a year, or ten,
I would thy exile live till then,
And all that space my mirth adjourn,
So thou wouldst promise to return,
And putting off thy ashy shroud,
At length disperse this sorrow's cloud.
But woe is me! the longest date
Too narrow is to calculate
These empty hopes; never shall I
Be so much blest as to descry
A glimple of thee, till that day come
Which shall the earth to cinders doom,
And a fierce fever must calcine
The body of this world like thine,
My little world. That fit of fire
Once off, our bodies shall aspire
To our souls' bliss; then we shall rise
And view ourselves with clearer eyes
In that calm region where no night
Can hide us from each other's sight.
Meantime, thou hast her, earth; much good
May my harm do thee. Since it stood
With heaven's will I might not call
Her longer mine, I give thee all
My short-lived right and interest
In her whom living I loved best;
With a most free and bounteous grief,
I give thee what I could not keep.
Be kind to her, and prithee look
Thou write into thy doomsday book
Each parcel of this rarity
Which in thy casket shrined doth lie.
See that thou make thy reck'ning straight,
And yield her back again by weight;
For thou must audit on thy trust
Each grain and atom of this dust,
As thou wilt answer Him that lent,
Not gave thee, my dear monument.
So close the ground, and 'bout her shade
Black curtains draw, my bride is laid.
Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquieted!
My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake
Till I thy fate shall overtake;
Till age, or grief, or sickness must
Marry my body to that dust
It so much loves, and fill the room
My heart keeps empty in thy tomb.
Stay for me there, I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.
And think not much of my delay;
I am already on the way,
And follow thee with all the speed
Desire can make, or sorrws breed.
Each minute is a short degree,
And ev'ry hour a step towards thee.
At night when I betake to rest,
Next morn I rise nearer my west
Of life, almost by eight hours' sail,
Than when sleep breathed his drowsy gale.
Thus from the sun my bottom steers,
And my day's compass downward bears;
Nor labor I to stem the tide
Through which to thee I swiftly glide.
'Tis true, with shame and grief I yield,
Thou like the van first tookst the field,
And gotten hath the victory
In thus adventuring to die
Before me, whose more years might crave
A just precedence in the grave.
But hark! my pulse like a soft drum
Beats my approach, tells thee I come;
And slow howe'er my marches be,
I shall at last sit down by thee.
The thought of this bids me go on,
And wait my dissolutïon
With hope and comfort. Dear, forgive
The crime, I am content to live
Divided, with but half a heart,
Till we shall meet and never part.