Copy Book Archive

Love’s Last Knot Richard Crashaw offers the hope of eternity for wedded love.
1646
Music: John Field

© Derek Voller, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. Source

About this picture …

‘Let them sleep on / Till the eternal morrow dawn’... The dawn of another day, as if of another world, over Derwentwater in Cumbria.

Love’s Last Knot
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.)

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.

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. (48 / 60 words)

Suggested Music

Nocturne No. 8 in A Major (Andante)

John Field (1782-1837)

Played by Benjamin Frith.

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How To Use This Passage

You can use this passage to help improve your command of English.

IRead it aloud, twice or more. IISummarise it in one sentence of up to 30 words. IIISummarise it in one paragraph of 40-80 words. IVMake notes on the passage, and reconstruct the original from them later on. VJot down any unfamiliar words, and make your own sentences with them later. VIMake a note of any words that surprise or impress you, and ask yourself what meaning they add to the words you would have expected to see. VIITurn any old-fashioned English into modern English. VIIITurn prose into verse, and verse into prose. IXAsk yourself what the author is trying to get you to feel or think. XHow would an artist or a photographer capture the scene? XIHow would a movie director shoot it, or a composer write incidental music for it?

For these and more ideas, see How to Use The Copy Book.

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