Patmore on How Has She Cheapen'd Paradise

Coventry Patmore · Mystic Verse and Insights Series · 2 pages

Two pages holding *three short extracts from Coventry Patmore, each under its own heading — from Sponsa Dei, from Life of the Life, and the complete lyric Unthrift*.

The first is four lines beginning from the text that what we shall be has not yet appeared, and turning on the assertion that Man is none, save One. The second is a conditional: that if mortal breath could express the passion then inspired, evil would die a natural death, nothing transient would be desired, and an error would pass from the soul leaving the senses pure and strong as sunbeams — undercut immediately by the closing line, that the best, alas, has neither memory nor tongue. The third and longest is the lyric that gives the file its title, addressed to a wasteful woman who may set her own price on her sweet self knowing that he cannot choose but pay. The charge against her is not extravagance but the opposite of value: how she has cheapened Paradise, given her priceless gift for nothing, spoiled the bread and spilled the wine which, spent with due and respective thrift, had made brutes men and men divine. The economic vocabulary — price, thrift, spending — is doing the work throughout, and the point being made is that what is given away carelessly loses the power it would have had if kept and given rightly.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.2 MB, 2 pages)