On poetry, procrastination, and fresh opportunities

 The Mary Baker Eddy Library explains that the young Mary Baker grew up on poetry, that one of her teachers drew her mother’s attention to Mary’s poetic talents, and that Mary once believed she would become a poet. The Library also explains a lovely incident where Mary had lost consciousness and her brother Albert continued to read her verses from Night Thoughts, a poem by Englishman Edward Young (1683?-1765), until she recovered.

Eddy quotes four lines from this poem in her sermon Christian Healing.

The full poem is available at the Gutenberg Project. This site also provides commentary by the Rev. George Gilfillan and gives helpful background:

…in 1741, Young’s wife … Lucia … expired. He now felt himself alone, and blasted in his solitude. But his grief did not sink into sullen inactivity. He made it oracular, and distilled his tears into song. The “Night Thoughts” were immediately commenced, and published between 1742 and 1744. This marvellous poem was all composed either at night, or when riding on horseback—an exercise, by the way, which gives a sense of mastery and confidence, stirs the blood, elevates the animal spirits, and has been felt by many to be eminently favourable to thought and mental composition. 

Two extracts appear below. (The second is the passage quoted by Mrs. Eddy in Christian Healing, page one.)

This long but readable poem is in nine parts and is written in blank verse, which means that while the lines don’t rhyme, they are metered. Further, blank verse often uses iambic pentameter, a style adopted famously by William Shakespeare, e.g.

da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM / da DUM
When I / do count / the clock / that tells  / the time
(Source: Wikipedia).

Readers can decide whether or not Young uses iambic pentameter.

The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death & Immortality.

Night I. On life, death, and immortality.

Humbly inscribed to the right honourable Arthur Onslow, Esq., Speaker of the House of Commons.

By Edward Young

Lines 393-398

Procrastination is the thief of time;

  Year after year it steals, till all are fled,

  And to the mercies of a moment leaves

  The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

  If not so frequent, would not this be strange?

  That 't is so frequent, this is stranger still.

Lines 417-420

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;

  Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;

  At fifty, chides his infamous delay,

  Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;

The theme of procrastination and delay reappear at the end of Eddy’s sermon, but here offer the reader the glad tidings of “fresh opportunities”:

        Tireless Being, patient of man's procrastination, affords him fresh opportunities every hour; but if Science makes a more spiritual demand, bidding man go up higher, he is impatient perhaps, or doubts the feasibility of the demand. 

(Christian Healing, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 19: 18-21)

Julie Swannell