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

‘Looke Downe to Heaven’ 238
The difference onely this appeares,
(Nor can the change offend)
The debt is paid in Ruby-Teares,
Which thou in Pearles did’st lend. (17-20)
The weeping, which represents repentance, produces pearls, and these then fall at the feet
of Jesus, but in response, the crucified Lord’s eyes bleed rubies. There is an exchange
taking place in the redemption, but the petitioners are not able to buy their salvation, they
may only give pearls to him for his sacrifice, and they may lay them at his feet, but his feet
too produce gems, and they are returned to the believer. The white pearl is made clean
through becoming the red ruby, which as Crashaw points out ‘Nor can the change offend’,
because in this scenario, the white pearl, though seeming pure in its whiteness and its
originating from Jesus, is actually purified when bled upon and made into the red ruby.
Once again, it is only after interacting with the physical Jesus that human physicality can
take on attributes of the divine, so while the poem does end in tears and blood transformed
into gems, this does not lead the reader away from the body of Christ, but back to it. The
rubies originate from his eyes, as do the pearls which are returned to him by the readers,
and both lead back to the exchange that must happen on the cross as Crashaw has this first
meditation on Christ’s body on the cross.
The poem which follows is an epigram continuing the same theme of a bloody
Christ, ‘On our crucified Lord Naked, and bloody’. Once again, the epigram is replete
with contradictions and paradoxes. The first line is one that contradicts itself as Crashaw
presents the reader with the horror of Jesus, God in man, hanging bloody and naked on the
cross. In many ways there could be no greater sign of the shame that came with the cross