In Memory of
MRS JANE wife of
MR HENRY SHERRIL
who died April 23d 1798
in the 35th Year of her Age
Vital sparks of heavenly flame
Quit o quit this mortal frame
Trembling hoping lingring [sic] flying
O the pain the bliss of dying
Cease fond nature cease thy strife
And let me languish into life.
These are the opening lines of Alexander Pope’s ode A Dying Christian to his Soul, written in 1712. I read a version of it appended to a ca. 1799 chapbook account of a ‘poor half-witted man’ who was deeply moved by a sermon he heard one day preached on I Timothy 1:15 (“... Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief”) and came to realize he was equal to all other men in the eyes of Christ. This was printed too late to be a source for Jane Sherril’s memorial, but it provides a glimpse into the rich flow of printed devotional material available to readers at the time. In addition to appearing in anthologies and chap-books, Pope’s ode also was used widely as a hymn. Jane Sherril’s epitaph might have come from any of these three sources.
There is a vitality and genius to Pope’s poetry that I did not appreciate as a younger reader. What a marvelous emotional intensity is distilled into just one couplet: “Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying, / O the pain, the bliss of dying!” And the next two lines express in a compressed way a profound religious concept, that what appears to be a slow death can be understood to be languishing into (eternal) life.
I wonder if this particular selection might indicate that she died from a lingering illness.
