Hadrian's Wail

Shape note music has been called crude and unsophisticated, especially by music critics schooled in standard Western music theory; less so by musicologists and others willing to look beyond what is considered classic music. Still, some songs found in The Sacred Harp aspire to a kind of nuance and sophistication appreciated by Western music theory. These songs are found especially among the odes and anthems in The Sacred Harp. They are sometimes called “class music,” because they were meant to be sung as a kind of a capstone of a singing master’s instruction: they were meant not so much to be sung in a worship setting, but to be performed by a class.

One such song is 245, CLAREMONT. Called VITAL SPARK in the Cooper edition of The Sacred Harp, it is a setting of Alexander Pope’s poem, “The dying Christian to his soul.” In this, the inaugural issue of Vital Sparks, we’ll look at this poem and its history. One even might say that parts of this poem date back to the fourth century C.E.

Alexander Pope was one of the most renown poets of 18th century England. He liked to read, write, and talk about ancient classical literature; it was his translation of Homer that made him famous (and, apparently, a lot of money). One of his friends, a Sir Richard Steele, wrote him in 1712:

These days, we usually call “the Emporor Adrian” Hadrian. Hadrian was a Roman emperor in the second century. He is perhaps best known for erecting “Hadian’s wall” to mark the northern border of Britannia; this is still standing in the United Kingdom. He is featured in a biography of twelve Roman emperors and sundry others in a work from the fourth century or so called The Historia Augusta. In this history, there is a poem purported to be written by Hadrian on his death bed. It reads:

Animula, vagula, blandula,
hospes comesque corporis,
quae nunc abibis in loca,
pallidula, rigida, nudula,
nec, ut soles, dabis iocos?

Here’s a literal translation, based on various sources:

Sweet little traveling soul,
My body’s guest and companion,
Where are you going now?
You pale, stiff, naked thing—
You won’t be making your usual jests.

It’s a pretty dismal final thought, and it’s no wonder that Sir Richard wanted a more “chearful” poem. As it turns out, Alexander Pope actually translated Animula, vagula, calling it The heathen to his departing soul. It goes like this:

Ah fleeting Spirit! wand’ring Fire,
That long hast warm’d my tender Breast,
Must thou no more this Frame inspire?
No more a pleasing, chearful Guest ?

Whither, ah whither art thou flying!
To what dark, undiscover’d Shore?
Thou seem’st all trembling, shivr’ing, dying,
And Wit and Humour are no more!

Pope answered Steele’s letter almost immediately. He wrote:

And here is the ode that he wrote:

The dying Christian to his soul

I.
Vital spark of heav’nly flame!
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame;
Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

II.
Hark! they whisper; Angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite,
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be Death?

III.
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav’n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy Victory?
O Death! where is thy Sting?

Hadrian’s “trembling, shivr’ing, dying” (as translated by Pope) becomes “Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,” and rather than mocking the dying body, the Christian languishes into life; longing to quit its mortal frame as the world recedes and disappears. Hadrian’s soul flies into death, but the Christian soul flies into the sights and sounds of heaven. He quotes from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, which reads (in King James’s English, the version Pope would have used):

There is a bit of a footnote to this story. Pope might have taken some of the lines of his poem from another poet, named Thomas Flatman, who was a 17th century English poet and painter.

In a book called An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope in two Volumes by a Joseph Warton written in 1806 or so, Warton writes:

Clearly, Warton did not have a high opinion of Flatman, but it appears that Pope thought this verse, at any rate, was useful as inspiration for The dying Christian to his soul!