“Earth’s Crammed with Heaven” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

According to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who see and those who don’t. We all enjoy the same universe around us, but our reactions depend on whether or not we see God’s signature in the mundane.

Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes—
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more from the first similitude.

First, I want to savor a moment of sheer craftsmanship. What beautiful, vivid, allusive, thought-provoking lines. Every word pulls its weight. Every allusion enriches the meaning. This right here exemplifies why poetry is so great: a few sentences can communicate pages of meaning. It’s crystalized content. Bravo, Mrs. Browning!

So yes, it’s lovely and wonderful, but let’s take a quick peek at what on earth she’s talking about.

Crammed with Heaven

Browning’s famous lines are taken from her long book in verse called Aurora Leigh. I haven’t read the whole thing myself, but I did find it helpful to read the larger context around this quotation. Her narrator has been asserting that all of creation is two-fold: it’s equal parts physical and spiritual. To divide the parts or try to enjoy one without the other is foolish and even fatal. The beauty of the physical comes from the significance endowed by the spiritual.

Browning wasn’t proposing transcendental theology. She believed the Bible and was merely echoing God’s truth from verses like Romans 1:20: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Creation and eternity are inextricably linked.

Burning Bushes and Blackberries

Like the apostle Paul in Romans 1, Browning bemoans the human tendency to ignore the divine source of the world’s wonder. The burning bush, as you no doubt guessed, is an allusion to Moses in the Old Testament. Moses was minding his own business one day when he saw a flaming bush that didn’t burn up. The presence of God spoke to him from the bush, telling him to take off his shoes because he was on holy ground. A common bush communicated the presence of God Almighty.

While God doesn’t usually catch our attention through combusting shrubbery these days, his presence is just as palpable for those who have eyes to see. As for the rest of us, the bush may be burning, but we don’t notice. God may be speaking, but we don’t hear. All we see is a physical reality to satisfy a physical desire. We ignore the flames and pick the blackberries.

The Last Two Lines

The last two lines don’t usually get included in the quotation, and you can kind of see why. They seem odd, almost like they don’t belong. But we can’t, in good conscience, stop the quote at a comma; it’s against literary law. Browning intended us to puzzle through her final lines in order to make sense of the whole. Ergo, here are my best hypotheses based on two connotations of the word “daub.”

Moses’ Veil

First, daub means to paint thickly and inexpertly—in other words, to cover with a layer of paint. Since this part of her poem has been about Moses, I thought Browning could be using another Moses story as a contrast. She may be alluding to the way Moses covered his face with a veil after being with God (Exodus 34). God is so glorious that Moses’ face was painfully bright just because he’d spent time in God’s presence. Afterward, he wore a veil to spare the retinas of the Israelites.

Knowing this, Browning could be condemning the way we cover our faces to mar our likeness to the Creator. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them…” Yet even in Browning’s day, there were many who were “unaware” of that “first similitude” or likeness. Rather than finding God’s fingerprints on their faces and in their hearts, they would “daub” their natures. Those who ignore the image of God in their lives cover their faces, but not with a veil as Moses did. They cover them to obscure the image of God within.

Forbidden Fruit

But—here’s the zinger—daub can also mean to cover with a dirty or sticky substance. The picture of foolish people sitting around a holy bush, cramming their mouths with fruit, brings another Bible story to mind, doesn’t it? In the Garden of Eden, God was with Adam and Eve. They were quite literally in his presence. But when they chose to disobey him by eating fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they broke fellowship and brought death.

I can picture their mouths dripping with the bloody juices of the fruit like Denethor’s tomato in the Lord of the Rings movie. When Adam and Eve heard God coming, did they “daub” or dab at the sticky evidence in hopes of wiping away the guilt? The image of God was marred, but the guilt remained.

And we, in our foolish pride, ignore God’s holy presence. All creation proclaims His name, but only those who hear will respond. Otherwise, we’ll eat the forbidden fruit and try to wipe our mouths clean, unaware of the “first similitude,” or how much we look like our first forebearers.

What’s Your Take?

And this is the beauty of poetry. A few well-phrased allusions can pack so much meaning. It takes some of the magic out of it to parse and dissect it like this, but sometimes it helps to see each truth laid out clearly. It leaves me with much to ponder, and I hope you feel the same!

I wonder which interpretation of the last two lines seems likelier to you. Do you think Browning intended us to see one of those allusions rather than the other? Or do you think she left it obscure in order to allude to both? Either way, I hope this poem helps us all to be more alert for “burning bushes” around us. The presence of God is often in the mundane.