Archive for poetry

An ever rolling stream

1024px-Beautiful_river_landscape_in_the_fall

This morning I was reading Ecclesiastes, and my heart went out to the Preacher. He sounds like a man who is drowning in time’s ever rolling stream: nothing changes; nothing matters; it just keeps coming. I know what he’s feeling: you work your whole life, day after day, and then it’s over. Someone else will enjoy everything you’ve worked for, and nobody will remember you when you’re gone.

 So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me; for all is vanity and a striving after wind. (Ecc.2:17)

Of course, I’d heard that “vanity of vanities” refrain many times before, but I was surprised when I realized that even the renewal of nature–which is typically a hopeful and joyous theme–merely confirms the truth of the writer’s despair. He sees the re-creation of the earth and our own appetite for experience and knowledge as manifestations of a deep hunger that will never be satisfied. Read what he says:

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
    vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
 What does man gain by all the toil
    at which he toils under the sun?
 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
    but the earth remains for ever.
 The sun rises and the sun goes down,
    and hastens to the place where it rises.
 The wind blows to the south,
    and goes round to the north;
round and round goes the wind,
    and on its circuits the wind returns.
 All streams run to the sea,
    but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
    there they flow again.
 All things are full of weariness;
    a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
    nor the ear filled with hearing.
 What has been is what will be,
    and what has been done is what will be done;
    and there is nothing new under the sun.
 Is there a thing of which it is said,
    “See, this is new”?
It has been already,
    in the ages before us.
 There is no remembrance of former things,
    nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to happen
    among those who come after.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

 

Oh, Qoheleth! You have gone to the dark place. Everything looks the same and everything makes you tired. God bless you. A lot of us have seen that place, some of us live there more often than not, but you describe it so well.

So I thought about this passage, and as I did, I remembered another writer who contemplated man and nature, and knew futility and despair and the temptation to feast on carrion comfort. I let the two of them carry on a bit of dialogue in my brain.

The writer of Ecclesiastes is not wrong–in fact, it feels like he’s asking a lot of the right questions: What are we to think of this world and Time that just keeps coming, though our own time seems so brief? Is there nothing but work? Will we ever be satisfied?

And yet, as I read Hopkins’ poetry I sense a change like that moment of clarity as the optometrist drops a correctly refracting lens into place. The reality of Time does not change, but the meaning of its reality shifts from “it’s never over” to “nature is never spent.”  The endlessness of our dissatisfaction–the ocean that is never full–becomes the hint of something greater rather than an indication of futility, and the extent of our hunger suggests the vastness of the awaiting feast.

There’s a lot of grim truth in Ecclesiastes that you might miss if you only read the popular snippets, so I’m glad I spent the time this morning to let the Preacher go on for a bit. It’s oddly comforting to read both that

“the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all”

and “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” Something about the real human experience expressed in those words, I suppose.

Still, grim truth doesn’t feel to me like the whole truth, so I’ll end with Gerard Manley Hopkins. Nature is never spent.

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Who made thee?


      The Lamb

 by William Blake

Little Lamb who made thee?
         Dost thou know who made thee
Gave thee life & bid thee feed.
By the stream & o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice!
         Little Lamb who made thee
         Dost thou know who made thee

 

         Little Lamb I’ll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek & he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child & thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee.
         Little Lamb God bless thee.

 
I saw this statue outside an empty house set back in the woods away from the road. It seemed an unlikely setting for a lamb: why? Given a lamb and a question, Blake’s poem immediately came to mind.

i thank You God for most this amazing

by e. e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 

 

 

We shared this poem at my mother’s memorial service, along with God’s Grandeur.

…ah! bright wings

Love (III)

Love (III)

George Herbert

 

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lacked any thing.

 

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

 

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

So I did sit and eat.

 

A setting of this poem:  “Love Bade Me Welcome” from Five Mystical Songs set by Ralph Vaughan Williams

 

 

 

Felix Randal

 

Felix Randal
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

 

 

Photo credit:  reway2007, Creative Commons: A, N-C, SA

Love came down at Christmas

 

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine,
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

                     –Christina Rosetti

 

Daniel E. Gawthrop composed one of my favorite settings of this poem.
You can listen to it here.  (Or try here, if you have trouble.)

In Canterbury Cathedral

On a day sweet with April showers
the safe tires of our tour bus
had sung us south from London,

Sightseer pilgrims, cameras slung,
no need or time on patient plodding
horses for long diverting tales.

We stood at last at Beckett’s shrine,
lost in architecture and dates,
confused by Norman and Gothic.

Our ancient tiny guide seemed shrunk
into his suit, dwarfed by his clothes
as we all were dwarfed by time.

His small precise English voice went on: pronounced “Our Lord,”
and the words fell on us
like a benediction.

“Our”—incredible assumption of union
offered in passing to American strangers,
mortar for diverse motley stones.

Time and blood and history redeemed
from meaninglessness: two words
turned sightseers into pilgrims.

E. W. Oldenburg (1936-1974)

Prayer, the Church’s banquet

Prayer (I)
by George Herbert (1593-1633)

 

Prayer the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth;

Engine against th’ Almighty, sinner’s tower,
Reverséd thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six day’s world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted Manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed,
The Milky Way, the bird of Paradise,

Church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices, something understood.

God’s Grandeur

God’s Grandeur
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.