A song to David Edited with notes 1898 [Leather Bound]

by Christopher Smart

{ 14.60 x 22.86 cms} Leather Binding on Spine and Corners with Golden Leaf Printing on round Spine (extra customization on request like complete leather, Golden Screen printing in Front, Color Leather, Colored book etc.) Reprinted in 2013 with the help of original edition published long back [1898]. This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, we processed each page manually and make them readable but in some cases some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. - English, Pages 52. COMPLETE LEATHER WILL COST YOU EXTRA US$ 25 APART FROM THE LEATHER BOUND BOOKS. {FOLIO EDITION IS ALSO AVAILABLE.} Complete - A song to David Edited with notes 1898 [Leather Bound] by Christopher Smart

Genres: Poetry, Classics, 18th Century

52 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1763

About the author

Christopher Smart was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines, The Midwife and The Student, and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London.
Smart was infamous as the pseudonymous midwife "Mrs. Mary Midnight" and for widespread accounts of his father-in-law, John Newbery, locking him away in a mental asylum for many years over Smart's supposed religious "mania". Even after Smart's eventual release, a negative reputation continued to pursue him as he was known for incurring more debt than he could repay; this ultimately led to his confinement in debtors' prison until his death.
His two most widely known works are A Song to David and Jubilate Agno, which are believed to have been written during his confinement in St. Luke's Asylum, although this is still debated by scholars as there is no record of when they were written. It is even more unclear when the works were written as Jubilate Agno was not published until 1939 when it was found in a library archive and A Song to David received mixed reviews until the 19th century. To his contemporaries, Smart was known mainly for his many contributions in the journals The Midwife and The Student, along with his famous Seaton Prize poems and his mock epic The Hilliad. Although he is recognized primarily as a religious poet, his poetry includes various other themes, such as his theories on nature and his promotion of English nationalism.

Reviews

[John Yelverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poem is written as a song to the great songwriter of the Bible, King David. Unlike David however, this poem begins to ramble on until it starts to cease being an enjoyable read.

[Drkshadow03 · Rating 2 out of 5]

The poem praises David as a virtuous man while recounting various biblical episodes intermixed with abstract characteristics about him that the poet lauds. There is also a random poetic retelling of Genesis at some point, random stanzas framed around Greek letters representing the Alpha and Omega association with God and Jesus, ending with stanzas that are sensuous descriptions of flowers, plants, and the beauty of nature, beseeching us to give proper adoration and credit to to God for bringing about such beauty and nature into the world, and a final stanza that praises Jesus as the capstone of all this adoration and glory of God’s universe.

Christopher Smart wrote this while incarcerated in an insane asylum. If religious poetry isn’t your thing then this is not a poem you will enjoy. Likewise, while there are sections and stanzas that are coherent, many of the parts feel haphazard like there are four or five different poems being shoved into the framework of one with only a loose thread of religious sentiment and praise of God as the one thing tying them together.

The beginning sections about King David present him as an idealized religious figure worthy of imitation. The poet praises him for his virtue, constancy, battle prowess, self-control of evil thoughts, faith, loyalty to God.

“O DAVID, highest in the list
Of worthies, On God's ways insist,
   The genuine words repeat:
Vain are the documents of men,
And vain the flourish of the pen
   That keeps the fool's conceit.” - XLIX

At the same time, Smart is acknowledging the vanity of human wisdom. His idealized and virtuous person is a product of his religious feeling and faith, not something separate from it.

This link between David’s wisdom and virtue with his religious actions.

“The light of Israel in his ways,
Wise are his precepts, prayer and praise,
   And counsel to his child.” - XVI

Again David is presented as an ideal by being a “light of Israel” through his behaviors and his wisdom is given a religious character by associating it with prayer, prayer and presumably religious precepts.


Although Smart dismisses the vanity of men, their ideas, and writings, the poem does offer an interesting commentary on poetic expression through praise of David’s muse.

“His muse, bright angel of his verse,
Gives balm for all the thorns that pierce,
   For all the pangs that rage;
Blest light, still gaining on the gloom,
The more than Michael of his bloom,
   Th' Abishag of his age.”

Of course, the poems David is attributed with writing are the psalms and this are religious poems. The Greco-Román Muse and Biblical angel of verse are fused here. Poetic expression is only worthwhile if it is in service of adoration of God and other religious themes. Likewise, poetic expression allows us to deal with the inevitable difficulties and sufferings of life. The stanza ends with an interesting allusion to Mical (erroneously referred to as Michael) the daughter of Saul and first wife of David in his youth and also mentions Abishag a woman who is employed to leeep next to David to provide him warmth at the end of his life. There seems to be a double-meaning here in which these two women represent his youth to his old age, and they represent the false comfort of sexual and romantic love, which pales to religious ecstasy and love David expresses in his psalms.Poetic expression, especially religious poetic expression, is superior to the love and joys of this earth.

This gives some sense to the other disordered parts of the poem, which all in some way are about praising and adoring God, but also his creation, the beautiful things he has created. God occupies the role of ultimate artist whose masterpiece is creation itself. If only our religious praise is worthwhile, then nothing can be a greater artistic creation then that.

[Evelynn Moorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty deep when it was about David. And I loved the meter and rhyme scheme. Christopher Smart seems to be a fan of making a lot of little poetry pieces. Sometimes they weave together into a story or they have a theme, sometimes it feels random