Jesse Sharpe PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

‘Looke Downe to Heaven’ 230
them to confront the strangeness that is the Incarnation dying on the cross as well as the
sacrament of communion involving the consumption of the dead and risen saviour through
the Eucharist. As Lorraine Roberts says of Crashaw’s use of shocking imagery, ‘he
intended to force the reader into seeking the fundamental truth about the “conspiracy” of
the sacred and profane, of the created and the creator’. 45
So while these vitriolic responses
have garnered much discussion, and while Cunnar has tried to counterbalance the disgust,
the disgust is important for the poems to serve their function, and in this it can be said that
‘Blessed be the paps’ is an excellent example of Crashaw’s wit, as A. J. Smith also notes. 46
This poem is an epigram that plays with the title and source story. It deftly uses paradox,
and it certainly has quite the surprising turn to finish the poem off.
Suppose he had been Tabled at thy Teates,
Thy hunger feeles not what he eates:
Hee’l have his Teat e’re long (a bloody one)
The Mother then must suck the Son.
There should be no denying that this is a surprising piece of poetry, which R. V. Young
sees as Crashaw ‘attempting to impart some sense of the truly shocking implications of
Holy Communion’, 47 and the poem should make one uncomfortable; however, that does
not mean that it is not a brilliant piece of devotional writing.
In order to begin approaching this very short, yet very complex poem, one must
have in mind the story from the Gospel of Luke that Crashaw is using as inspiration for his
text, and while Cunnar importantly reminds readers of the medieval devotional tradition of
45 ‘The “Truewit” of Crashaw’s Poetry’, p. 182.
46 Metaphysical Wit, p. 175.
47 R. V. Young, Doctrine and Devotion (Cambridge, 2000), p. 156.