Posts Tagged religious themes

Stone Wall in Iowa (copyright © m.a.h. hinton)

Robinson Jeffers is famous for building by-hand his own stone home, “Tor House and Hawk Tower,” in Carmel, California. Because of that, it is natural for readers to approach a Jeffers’ poem as if it were also built stone-by-stone.

The image of poet as stone-builder is a good one: the perfect combination of the primitive and the craftsman and the anachronistic. Poetry is, after all, all of that.

Poetry is the oldest art. Even those who painted on cave walls were moved to try and shape their own world ultimately by the magic and religious words that gave their world and their lives meaning.

Words like stones have weight. We may treat words sometimes like they are merely the movements of breath, and play with  them that way… like stones we skip across the water to kill a few moments of the day. But words have a weight unto themselves. A weight we can hold in our hands and feel and measure. Words like God, beauty, desire, secret.

Jeffers, maybe more than any poet, understood the true weight of words, a primitive and anachronistic weight. A weight we cannot always articulate but which is always able to articulate us.

On a cool December morning, a Jeffers’ poem seems like just the thing.

Enjoy!

The Excesses of God
Is it not by his high superfluousness we know
Our God? For to equal a need
Is natural, animal, mineral: but to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells,
And make the necessary embrace of breeding
Beautiful also as fire,
Not even the weeds to multiply without blossom
Nor the birds without music:
There is the great humaneness at the heart of things,
The extravagant kindness, the fountain
Humanity can understand, and would flow likewise
If power and desire were perch-mates.

Listening with a pencil and my ear, these are the lines I marked:

                                   to fling
Rainbows over the rain
And beauty above the moon, and secret rainbows
On the domes of deep sea-shells

 

There are so many lines in this poem I love. But these are the lines that I have found myself repeating most often over the years.

There is a sub-genre of poetry called Christian Poetry just as in music there is a large amount of so-called Christian Music, Christian Rock, etc…. Just like with Christian Music, Christian Poetry merely has the outside trappings of poetry. It has none of the heart or soul or edge of real poetry. It has none of the weight that this poem by Jeffers does.

____

There are many excellent sources for finding new poems and poets on the web. One of my favorite sites, and a frequent stop for me, is the Poetry magazine website. That is where I found this poem by Spenser Reese.

Googling Reese,  I was un-surprised to discover that he had studied theology. From this poem I would have guessed as much… indeed, I would have been surprised to find that he had not. It is, after all, a religious poem written by one with enough sense and background to take the themes raised seriously.

It is a fine poem with the exception of one line, one metaphor that I do not particularly like:”little milky crosses grow like teeth”. I think if he could rework this one line, it would would be a much better poem… at least to me.

Metaphors and similes are one of the basic “tools of the trade” to poets. They can be familiar, novel, complicated, simple, extended, direct, or some combination of all of those things. But in end they need to convey, as exactly as possible, what it is the poet is trying to convey… NOT detract from it.

While I do not wholly subscribe to Eliot’s notion of the objective correlative, I believe that there does exist for words, symbols, metaphors, and phrases a duplexity of meanings that really do need to be respected. That is to say, some words and metaphors should never, ever be placed together because the weight and freight of their many meanings can not co-exist by definition. I would respectfully submit that the three words “milk, crosses, and teeth” are three such words. Putting them together in a clumsy, unworkable metaphor disfigures an otherwise fine poem. But, to quote Dennis Miller, “Then again… I could be wrong.”

I have always thought of Denise Levertov as intimidating. Looking back at a volume of her poetry I am not completely sure why that is. At first glance, she does not seem anymore or less accessible than a dozen other poets I can think of… and yet she does intimidate.

Theology and philosophy are constant themes in her poetry. Levertov brings an intelligence and breadth to her poetry that demands intelligent readers. You cannot read her lightly or with only your ear… you need to use both sides of your brain.

“Seeing for a Moment” is to my mind a “typical” Levertov poem… not so much in style as in direction or theme. It is a theological poem in the best sense of that term. It asks the reader to think deeper and more theologically about an ordinary moment: seeing one’s reflection, and more than merely a reflection, in a mirror.

Stylistically the poem is deceptively simple: short lines and stanzas. The complexity of the poem, like most of Levertov’s poems, is in the ideas not the form. It is this in the end that makes her an interesting and demanding poet.

Outside my Minnesota home the weather is warming.  The sun stays longer each day in the sky, brightening my mood and making me feel strong enough to tackle even Denise Levertov. Enjoy!

Seeing for a Moment

I thought I was growing wings—
it was a cocoon.

I thought, now is the time to step
into the fire—
it was deep water.

Eschatology is a word I learned
as a child: the study of Last Things;

facing my mirror—no longer young,
the news—always of death,
the dogs—rising from sleep and clamoring
and howling, howling,

nevertheless
I see for a moment
that’s not it: it is
the First Things.

Word after word
floats through the glass.
Towards me.

____

Mark Van Doren

When I think of Mark Van Doren, I always think of Thomas Merton. That is because it was Merton that first led me to read Van Doren, or rather, reading Merton’s Seven Story Moutain that led me to want to find and read Van Doren’s poetry.

Once Van Doren was widely acclaimed as a poet. His Collected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940. As time has passed though, his stature has diminished. His books are difficult to find. Looking on Amazon.com, I find used copies of his poetry available… but little currently in print.

It is difficult to say why Van Doren has fallen so far out of fashion. It is not his poetry or his poetic ability. It may simply be that at this point in time predominant tastes do not lean in his direction. Some day they will again. They must because his poetry is too good to be lost.

The first volume of Van Doren’s poetry I ever purchased was one I found at a used bookstore in Birmingham, Alabama. I was killing time waiting for a Greyhound bus headed for Florida and Key West. I stepped into a small used bookstore on my way back to the bus station from a barbecue place that someone had recommended to me.

The store was cramped and filled with Harlequin romances and old best sellers. On a table in the back, I found a paperback copy of Van Doren’s Collected Poems. It may have been the only volume of poetry in the whole store. It was beat up but unmarked and only  .75 cents. I bought it.

I read the book on the bus through Florida and in Key West. When I read one of his poems now, I quite often think of Key West… of Red Stripe beer and boats… of  long, lazy mornings and lazier afternoons… of music and girls and sun… of my youth.

What better way to start the weekend than reading a poem that reminds you of all of that….

Enjoy!

Morning Worship

I wake and hearing it raining.
Were I dead, what would I give
Lazily to lie here,
Like this, and live?

Or better yet: birdsong,
Brightening and spreading –
How far would I come then
To be at the world’s wedding?

Now that I lie, though,
Listening, living,
(Oh, but not forever,
Oh, end arriving)

How shall I praise them:
All the sweet beings
Eternally that outlive
Me and my dying?

Mountains, I mean; wind, water, air;
Grass, and huge trees; clouds, flowers,
And thunder, and night.

Turtles, I mean, and toads; hawks, herons, owls;
Graveyards, and towns, and trout; roads, gardens,
Red berries, and deer.

Lightning, I mean, and eagles; fences; snow;
Sunrise, and ferns; waterfalls, serpents,
Green islands, and sleep.

Horses, I mean; butterflies, whales;
Mosses, and stars and gravelly
Rivers, and fruit.

Oceans, I mean; black valleys; corn;
Brambles, and cliffs; rock, dirt, dust, ice;
And warnings of flood.

How shall I name them?
And in what order?
Each would be first.
Omission is murder.

Maidens, I mean, and apples; needles; leaves;
Worms, and planers, and clover; whirlwinds; dew;
Bulls; geese –

Stop. Lie still.
You will never be done.
Leave them all there.
Old lover. Live on.

____

Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind by Heinrich Fueger

This is a poem I originally wrote in the late 1990s as I was reading a number of books on mythology. As is my way, I have rewritten and reworked it for more than 10 years…. As I look back at journals, I see it is actually closer to 15 years.

I have written elsewhere that there are poems that stand alone and poems that benefit from context. I have always thought of this as one that needed the right kind of context and so I have written and re-written a number of “contextually” similar poems that have never quite, to my mind, fully arrived

I did not include it in my published volume of poetry called Montana Poems because it did not seem to truly “fit.” Looking at it again with fresh eyes in the context of this blog, I think it could have been included, and maybe should have been.

So now, on the last Tuesday of January, I let “Prometheus Deconstructed” go out alone into the world.

Enjoy!

Reddo 

The poem that once 
appeared in this space
is being re-drafted
and re-typed.

It will be re-posted
someday soon
at MontanaWriter.com.

Stay tuned!

____

 

St. Thomas Aquinas

The “poems” that make up the book of psalms were written long before the first century. Yet in the nature of great literature they hold truths that are as important and relevant today and they were when they were first heard.

In the time that Psalm 14 was first composed and sung, monotheism was a minority religion. Most  peoples of the world believed: in a set of gods particular to their culture/family; a democratic kind of holiness that said that you believe in your gods and I will believe in my gods and we will leave each other alone; or in no gods at all. While people claiming to adhere to monotheism in the 21st Century has increased “radically,” in point of fact, not much has changed.

The result of thinking that gods and religion really don’t matter are quite clear to the psalmist. For the psalmist, being rightly rooted in faith in the one true God leads naturally to peace, better life, and a better world. Just as obviously, being rooted into the wrong faith, or believing that faith does not matter, leads inevitably into violence, ignorance, and chaos.

St. Thomas Aquinas believed that if you had a thousand years, you could through reason convince any person of the existence of God and the truth of Christ. He believed, like the psalmist, that wisdom led back to the Creator because all reason and wisdom began there. Intellect and reason were inextricably mixed with the author of both.

Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and the rest of the reformers held no such confidence in the power of reason. The Protestant battle cries of “faith alone”… “scripture alone”… express the duality of reason and faith that the Reformation ushered into the Western world. Reason is used to talk about faith in the Protestant world, it cannot by definition lead you there. Mohammad created the same dualism for Islam by making God so transcendent that ultimately you can only hint at aspects of God. Reason in that religion has a lesser place apparently than even the most radical Protestantism.

The faith vs. reason battle of the Reformation has become the religion vs. science battle of our time. Like the psalmist, we live in a time when most people believe in whatever god (small g) they are born into “worshiping” or they believe in none at all. For the psalmist it is all the same. It involves ultimately, fools missing the truth of the one, true God.

Religion matters profoundly. Thinking it does not is foolishness. But it also matters whether the chosen religion is “true” or not. The wrong religion is also dangerous, more dangerous even than no religion at all, perhaps. That was true thousands of years ago. How much more true is it in our own nuclear-loaded, inter-connected, small world?

Psalm 14

The fool says in his heart,
“There is no God.”
They are corrupt, they do
abominable deeds,
there is none that does good.

2 The LORD looks down from heaven
upon the children of men,
to see if there are any that act
wisely,
that seek after God.

3 They have all gone astray, they are
all alike corrupt;
there is none that does good,
no, not one.

4 Have they no knowledge, all
the evildoers
who eat up my people
as they eat bread,
and do not call upon the LORD?

5 There they shall be in great terror,
for God is with the generation
of the righteous.
6 You would confound the plans
of the poor,
but the LORD is his refuge.

7 O that deliverance for Israel
would come out of Zion!
When the LORD restores
the fortunes of his people,
Jacob shall rejoice, Israel shall be glad.

____

Just one "small" part of the universe

On the first Sunday of the new year, I am thinking of some of the oldest poems that we have, the Book of Psalms. These “songs” were originally created to be used in worship, at the Temple in Jerusalem. They are now part of the Christian Old Testament and are either chanted at mass or simply read responsively.

Tradition attributes this psalm and many of the others to King David. Biblical scholarship suggests that that attribution is meant to be taken loosely not literally… but than again, fundamentalism aside, most biblical scholarship suggests that the Bible, Old and New Testaments, is not meant to be taken “literally.”

For the faithful of Judaism and Christianity, the Book of Psalms is seldom thought of as a book a poetry… but it is. And like any poetry translated from one language into another, much that runs beneath the words (forms, musicality, nuances, and word plays in the original language) is lost to us.

For the psalms, I still prefer the Revised Standard Version (RSV) translation. The archaic “thou” and “thy” maintains the musicality and stature of the King James while making use of modern biblical scholarship. The version of Psalm 8 that is here is RSV.

This psalm needs no explanation. The psalmist wonders at the beauty of the earth and the universe and marvels that mere human beings have come under the special attention of the Creator of such a vast and awe-inspiring creation.

Contemplating a universe created billions of years ago with “billions and billions” of galaxies where there would presumably be countless other inhabited worlds let alone possibly countless other dimensions, we have two options: to succumb to our apparent smallness within such limitless vastness and forgo our humanity or to acknowledge with humility the great status we have been given by the one great enough to be Creator of all. The psalmist points us to the answer to this essentially existential either/or question.

Psalm 8

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!
Thou whose glory above the heavens is chanted
2 by the mouth of babes and infants,
thou hast founded a bulwark because of thy foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars which thou hast established;
4 what is man that thou art mindful of him,
and the son of man that thou dost care for him?
5 Yet thou hast made him little less than God,
and dost crown him with glory and honor.
6 Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the sea.
9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!

____

by William Blake

Milton wrote this poem in 1629 at the age of 21. It is often considered his first great poem in English. It is poetically and theologically pure Milton. It is also the best Christmas poem ever written.

For almost 30 years now, I have re-read this poem on Christmas Eve. It is as close to a personal Christmas tradition as I have… one of a few literary/faith disciplines I keep.

These lines in particular are some of my favorite lines anyone has ever written. They are an example of what makes Milton to my mind the greatest poet of the English language.

But peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began:
The winds with wonder whist
Smoothly the waters kist,
Whisp’ring new joys to the mild ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

“On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” is admittedly a very long poem. At first I thought I would just post a few of my favorite stanza’s here, but I have change my mind. The stanzas can best be appreciated only within the context of the whole poem. And when a poem is this great, it is worth all the time and space you can give to it.

Finally, a note about Blake’s drawing that accompanies this posting. Poet and artist William Blake believed that Milton was the greatest of all poets. He created a number of illustrations for Milton’s work, along with illustrations for his own work. The illustration posted here was done in particular to accompany “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity.”

I wish to all my readers, a joy-filled Christmas. May we all experience the Incarnation in our lives and in our world.

Merry Christmas.

On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity

I

This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven’s eternal King,
Of wedded maid and Virgin Mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That he our deadly forfeit should release,
And with his Father work us a perpetual peace.

II

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of majesty,
Wherewith he wont at Heaven’s high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside, and, here with us to be,
Forsook the Courts of everlasting Day,
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

III

Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,
To welcome him to this his new abode,
Now while the heaven, by the Sun’s team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light,
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

IV

See how from far upon the Eastern road
The star-led Wisards haste with odours sweet!
Oh! run; prevent them with thy humble ode,
And lay it lowly at his blessèd feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel Quire,
From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.

The Hymn

I

It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature, in awe to him,
Had doffed her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the Sun, her lusty Paramour.

II

Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow,
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame,
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker’s eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

III

But he, her fears to cease,
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace:
She, crowned with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready Harbinger,
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And, waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.

IV

No war, or battail’s sound,
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hookèd chariot stood,
Unstained with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armèd throng;
And Kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.

V

But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
His reign of peace upon the earth began.
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly the waters kissed,
Whispering new joys to the mild Ocean,
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

VI

The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fixed in steadfast gaze,
Bending one way their precious influence,
And will not take their flight,
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warned them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow,
Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go.

VII

And, though the shady gloom
Had given day her room,
The Sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head of shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlightened world no more should need:
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright Throne or burning axletree could bear.

VIII

The Shepherds on the lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,
Sat simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below:
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep,
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep.

IX

When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook,
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringèd noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close.

X

Nature, that heard such sound
Beneath the hollow round
Of Cynthia’s seat the airy Region thrilling,
Now was almost won
To think her part was done,
And that her reign had here its last fulfilling:
She knew such harmony alone
Could hold all Heaven and Earth in happier union.

XI

At last surrounds their sight
A globe of circular light,
That with long beams the shamefaced Night arrayed;
The helmèd Cherubim
And sworded Seraphim
Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displayed,
Harping in loud and solemn quire,
With unexpressive notes, to Heaven’s newborn Heir.

XII

Such music (as ’tis said)
Before was never made,
But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced World on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.

XIII

Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven’s deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort of the angelic symphony.

XIV

For, if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back and fetch the Age of Gold;
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
And leprous Sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions of the peering day.

XV

Yes, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
The enamelled arras of the rainbow wearing;
And Mercy set between,
Throned in celestial sheen,
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.

XVI

But wisest Fate says No,
This must not yet be so;
The Babe lies yet in smiling infancy
That on the bitter cross
Must redeem our loss,
So both himself and us to glorify:
Yet first, to those chained in sleep,
The wakeful trump of doom must thunder through the deep,

XVII

With such a horrid clang
As on Mount Sinai rang,
While the red fire and smouldering clouds outbrake:
The aged Earth, aghast
With terror of that blast,
Shall from the surface to the centre shake,
When, at the world’s last sessiön,
The dreadful Judge in middle air shall spread his throne.

XVIII

And then at last our bliss
Full and perfect is,
But now begins; for from this happy day
The Old Dragon under ground,
In straiter limits bound,
Not half so far casts his usurpèd sway,
And, wroth to see his Kingdom fail,
Swindges the scaly horror of his folded tail.

XIX

The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
Will hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathèd spell,
Inspires the pale-eyed Priest from the prophetic cell.

XX

The lonely mountains o’er,
And the resounding shore,
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament;
Edgèd with poplar pale,
From haunted spring, and dale
The parting Genius is with sighing sent;
With flower-inwoven tresses torn
The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.

XXI

In consecrated earth,
And on the holy hearth,
The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint;
In urns, and altars round,
A drear and dying sound
Affrights the Flamens at their service quaint;
And the chill marble seems to sweat,
While each peculiar power forgoes his wonted seat.

XXII

Peor and Baälim
Forsake their temples dim,
With that twice-battered god of Palestine;
And moon&egraved Ashtaroth,
Heaven’s Queen and Mother both,
Now sits not girt with tapers’ holy shine:
The Libyc Hammon shrinks his horn;
In vain the Tyrian maids their wounded Thammuz mourn.

XXIII

And sullen Moloch, fled,
Hath left in shadows dread
His burning idol all of blackest hue;
In vain with cymbals’ ring
They call the grisly king,
In dismal dance about the furnace blue;
The brutish gods of Nile as fast,
Isis, and Orus, and the dog Anubis, haste.

XXIV

Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian grove or green,
Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud;
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest;
Nought but profoundest Hell can be his shroud;
In vain, with timbreled anthems dark,
The sable-stolèd Sorcerers bear his worshiped ark.

XXV

He feels from Juda’s land
The dreaded Infant’s hand;
The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn;
Nor all the gods beside
Longer dare abide,
Not Typhon huge ending in snaky twine:
Our Babe, to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling bands control the damnèd crew.

XXVI

So, when the Sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,
Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to the infernal jail,
Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
And the yellow-skirted Fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze.

XXVII

But see! the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest,
Time is our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven’s youngest-teemèd star
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.

_____

On the last Sunday in Advent, “God’s Grandeur” by Hopkins seems like the perfect poem to read as we prepare for the coming birth of the Christ child. But if truth be told, on any day of the week a Hopkins’ poem would no doubt be the perfect poem to read.

Hopkins was a convert to Roman Catholicism. His Roman Catholic faith infuses his poetry in a way that is as unique to English poetry as his famous sprung rhythm is. Combined they make him one of the most interesting poets in the English language. And one of the most difficult.

Hopkins is difficult because he consistently pushes the boundaries of language, metaphor, and thought. He makes your tongue and your mind work. Most of his poems require more than one reading to fully appreciate them. The effort, however, is worth it. His poetry is wonderful.

“God’s Grandeur” in not one of Hopkins’ difficult poems. It is, however, one of his most famous. On a Sunday morning, it’s hymn-like quality seems very apropos.

Enjoy!

God’s Grandeur

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.

_____

John Milton

On a Sunday morning John Milton seem appropriate. The problem with Milton though is that he intimidates: for the sheer size of his magnus opus, Paradise Lost; for his enormous influence on English poetry; for his unabashed and confounding faith; for his undeniable perfection of poetic language and musicality. For all these reasons and a score more, Milton intimidates to the point of scaring erstwhile readers away.

The best place to begin with Milton is to begin with some of his small poems. And there is no better small poem to begin with than “On his Blindness.” Here we are introduced to the “human-side” of Milton… the man himself, not merely the great poet.

On the Second Sunday in Advent, a poem about faith and waiting seems very timely indeed.

On His Blindness

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”

_____