“overcome with love”

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,

If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,

But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,

And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,

Missing me one place search another,

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

                                          Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

These beautiful lines came to mind a few days ago, while working on a translation of William Robinson’s Letter to the Lord’s People,^* written in August 1659, four days before he was hanged in Boston for returning to the city after banishment.

Our brother William writes in a reiterative, ecstatic style quite similar to Whitman’s, easy to divide into lines of free verse:

I am overcome with love,

for it is my life and the length of my days,

it’s my glory and my daily strength,

I am swallowed up with love,

in love I live, and in it I dwell with the Holy Seed.

You children of the living God,

feel me when you are waiting in it,

when it runs from the fountain into your vessel,

when it issues gently like new wine into your bosoms,

then feel me present in the fountain of love.

With the life of it I am filled,

and with it I shall depart,

with everlasting joy in my heart,

with praises in my mouth.

What is this ecstasy, this overwhelming flow of love in the face of imminent unjust death?  And how does he expect his fellow Quakers to “feel” him?  It makes no sense at all.  Yet clearly it is sincere, heart-felt.  Marmaduke Stephenson and Mary Dyer, condemned to die at the same time, left behind similar expressions of joy.  On the way to the gallows, hand in hand between the two men, Mary said she had been in Paradise for several days.  When she was reprieved after seeing the others die, she didn’t want to descend from the gallows, but they threw her out of town anyway; she returned a few months later and was hanged. 

It certainly isn’t a death-wish.  It’s a life-wish, overflowing love and confidence in God, absolute certainty that they are obeying their loving Guide.  It rings through their words, through the whole story.  The four who were hanged were not the only Quakers who suffered in Boston.  Three had their right ears cut off, one was branded with the letter H, thirty-one were flogged with 650 stripes.  This joyful confident obedience is beyond me.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. (Psalm 139:6 KJV)

“Feel me present in the fountain of love.” This is perhaps a little more accessible to me, because I do feel the presence of loved ones who are no longer living, and others whom I may never see again.  These people shaped me, not by deliberate intention but by simply being who they were.  I feel them present, they are filter and fiber of my blood.  That human love, so strong, flows with Divine Love, uniting us across years and miles, beyond mortal limitations. 

Divine Thou, help me to grow more and more conscious of that love; help me feel thy fountain bubbling up like new wine; help me feel thee present in dear ones by my side and far away.  Help me to feel you under my boot-soles.  Teach me the joy of obedience, the certainty of your loving presence.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses … let us run with patience the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1 KJV)

* Early Quaker Writings, 1650-1700, eds. Hugh Barbour & Arthur O. Roberts (Grand Rapids MI, Eerdmans, 1973), p. 133.