In "Upon a Spider Catching a Fly" there are several
different religious interpretations.
The poem appears
here:
Thou
sorrow, venom Elfe:
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of
thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For Why?I saw
a pettish wasp
Fall foule therein:
Whom yet thy Whorle pins did
not clasp
Lest he should fling
His
sting.But as affraid, remote
Didst stand
hereat,
And with thy little fingers stroke
And gently
tap
His back.Thus gently him didst
treate
Lest he should pet,
And in a froppish, aspish
heate
Should greatly fret
Thy
net.Whereas the silly Fly,
Caught by its
leg
Thou by the throate tookst hastily
And ‘hinde the
head
Bite Dead.This goes to pot, that
not
Nature doth call.
Strive not above what strength hath
got,
Lest in the brawle
Thou fall.This
Frey seems thus to us.
Hells Spider gets
His intrails spun to
whip Cords thus
And wove to nets
And
sets.To tangle Adams race
In’s stratigems
To
their Destructions, spoil’d, made base
By venom things,
Damn’d Sins.But mighty, Gracious Lord
Communicate
Thy Grace to breake the Cord, afford
Us Glorys
Gate
And State.We’l Nightingaile sing
like
When pearcht on high
In Glories Cage, thy glory,
bright,
And thankfully,
For
joy.
In the poem, the spider
represents the devil, and the web is temptation/sin. The wasp and the fly are two
different types of people. The wasp represents a person who fights mightily against
temptation and falling into the trap of the devil, yet is still coerced into sin. The
fly is an unwary sinner who is less capable of fighting against the devil's force. Both
are caught, but in different ways. The wasp is wooed by the devil, while the fly is
stupidly caught and killed immediately. At the end of the poem, Taylor asks God to grant
us the ability to fight the devil's temptation and escape his "web". Once saved from the
trap of the devil, we can be in "glory's cage" (heaven) singing beautifully as a
nightingale would to thank God for our salvation from sin and
hell.
No comments:
Post a Comment