"All human things Of dearest value hang on slender strings"
About this Quote
A whole worldview is tucked into Waller's image of precious things dangling by thread: value as a condition of risk. The line works because it refuses sturdiness. “All human things” sounds like a sweeping claim, but the verb does the real labor: “hang.” Nothing is secured; everything is suspended, temporary, and a little undignified. Even “dearest value” isn’t framed as earned or protected, just vulnerable to the smallest snap. The metaphor is tactile and domestic (string, not chain), which makes the threat feel everyday rather than apocalyptic. Disaster here isn’t thunderbolts; it’s a frayed fiber.
Waller writes as a 17th-century court poet, a profession that trains you to notice how quickly fortune flips. He lived through civil war, regime change, and the ruthless volatility of favor. In that context, “slender strings” reads like political realism in lyrical dress: titles, reputations, patronage, even safety can depend on a single conversation overheard, a rumor, a sovereign’s mood. The elegance of the couplet-like cadence masks a hard lesson: fragility is not an exception to the human condition, it’s the mechanism.
The subtext also cuts inward. The things we prize most - love, trust, health, peace of mind - often depend on arrangements we pretend are stable because admitting their precariousness would be intolerable. Waller’s restraint is the point: no moralizing, no consolation. Just the quiet, unnerving accuracy of a thread pulled taut.
Waller writes as a 17th-century court poet, a profession that trains you to notice how quickly fortune flips. He lived through civil war, regime change, and the ruthless volatility of favor. In that context, “slender strings” reads like political realism in lyrical dress: titles, reputations, patronage, even safety can depend on a single conversation overheard, a rumor, a sovereign’s mood. The elegance of the couplet-like cadence masks a hard lesson: fragility is not an exception to the human condition, it’s the mechanism.
The subtext also cuts inward. The things we prize most - love, trust, health, peace of mind - often depend on arrangements we pretend are stable because admitting their precariousness would be intolerable. Waller’s restraint is the point: no moralizing, no consolation. Just the quiet, unnerving accuracy of a thread pulled taut.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
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