Mary Masters

Mary Masters (1694?—1759?) is a working class poet born in Otley, which is now part of the city of Leeds. She is referred to in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, where it’s said she occasionally visited Dr. Johnson, who revised her writings and "illuminated them here and there with a ray of his own genius." It is also known that she sometimes stayed at the home of Edward Cave, the editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, when visiting London.

Her Poems on Several Occasions was published in London in 1733. Her second book Familiar Letters and Poems on Several Occasions appeared in 1755. One brief poem from that book, which has been expanded into a hymn, is as follows:
------'Tis religion that can give
------Sweetest pleasures while we live.
------'Tis religion must supply
------Solid comfort when we die.

Masters included expanded versifications of Psalm 29, Psalm 37, Psalm 90, and Psalm 137 in her first collection. More faithful psalm versifications had already become a popular form of Christian poetry years earlier, including those from Sir Philip Sidney, and continued by his sister Mary Sidney Herbert. The following poem is Masters’ versification and expansion on Psalm 90, which according to tradition was written by Moses.

Psalm 90

------Verse I
Monarch of Heav’n, and Earth, and Sea,
Patron of Israel’s Progeny;
In every Clime from Age to Age
Our Line survives all hostile Rage,
With thy Divinity immur’d
As in a Dome of Rock secur’d.
------Verse II
Ancient of Days! Ere this wide Earth
With all her Hills disclos’d, to birth
Arose; ere you bright Lamps on high
Were kindled thro’ the boundless Sky;
Thou hadst a Life Eternal pass’d
That with Eternity shall last
------Verse III
But what is Man? thy sov’reign Doom
Soon hurls the Mortal to a Tomb:
“Return to dust,” thy voice commands,
Death hears, and sweeps off half the Lands.
------Verse IV
While so immense, thy Life appears,
That, ev’n a thousand rolling Years,
Diminish, in thy vast Survey,
To an elaps’d, forgotten Day:
Whole Ages vanish in thy fight
Like the short Portion of a Night.
------Verse V
How oft (amazing to behold!)
Destruction has her Torrents roll’d!
Born headlong down the violent Stream,
The Mighty perish, like a Dream!
Sad Devastation! Swift and wide!
Thus blooms at Morn, the Meadows Pride,
------Verse VI
At Morn, in lusty Verdure gay,
At Eve, the Sickle’s hapless Prey
A wide-extended Ruin lies
On the bare Waste, and with’ring dies.
------Verse VII
O’er-whelm’d with Terror and Amaze,
We fee thy Wrath, around us, blaze.
Consum’d by thine avenging Ire
With copious Death our Hosts expire.
------Verse VIII
Thy Face, by its own Beams, descries
All our conceal’d Iniquities
Stern Justice every Crime arraigns;
And lays of each its Load of Pains.
------Verse IX
All our sad Days, thy Frowns we mourn;
Sickly, and weak, with Sorrow worn;
And mounting to our Noon a-pace,
And quickly finishing the Race,
The Measure of our Years is run,
Spent like a Tale.
------Verse X
------------------------The deathless Sun
Scarce seventy Springs renews his round,
Ere w lie mould’ring in the Ground:
Or should the vig’rous and the strong
Ten winters more drag Life along,
‘Tis a Reprieve, devoid of Rest,
Harrass’d with Toils, with Fears opprest,
And in our Strength cut off at last,
We vanish: thus a sudden Blast,
When fatal Shears the Fleece divide,
Whirls out of fight the falling Pride.
------Verse XI
Dread Sov’reign when thy Vengeance glows,
Who its full Force and Fury knows?
Great as our Fears, and unconfin’d
As thy own vast Almighty Mind.
------Verse XII
Make us, O make us, Father wise
To mark the Moment, as it flies,
Keep the small Sum of Life in view
And, whither Wisdom leads, pursue.
------Verse XIII
Return, offended Pow’r, we pray,
How long ———? O torturing Delay!
Pity the Pains thy Servants feel,
At length the stern Decree repeal.
Bid the auspicious Morning smile,
That finishes our Years of Toil.
------Verse XIV
Let Mercy then prepare a Feast,
And let our Nation be the Guest:
Till in full Tides our Joys arise,
Our Acclamations rend the Skies;
------Verse XV
Till in full Tides our Joy o’erflows,
Lasting and great, as now , our Woes.
------Verse XVI
Before our steps, thy Pow’r display,
With Wonders mark the shining Way:
O let thy Patronage Divine
Diffuse a Glory round our Line,
------Verse XVII
Thy Patronage Divine proclaim,
Thro’ ev’ry Land our honour’d Name.
Secure of thy Almighty Aid,
On that Eternal Basis laid,
May all our Plans of Conquest stand,
And all the Labours of our Hand.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner*

Jill Peláez Baumgaertner is a Chicago poet with seven collections to her name. She is also an influential editor — serving first as poetry editor for The Cresset, then for First Things, and finally for The Christian Century — a role she is still fulfilling. She is Professor of English Emerita at Wheaton College, where she also served as Dean of Humanities and Theological Studies.

Her new poetry book is a unique collection — a partnership, really, between Baumgertner and the Romanian sculptor Liviu Mocan. The sculptures, paired throughout the book with Baumgaerner’s poems, clearly stand on their own, and the poems work independently of the images. Even so, when they are considered together the experience is enriched.

Liviu says, “"When my hands touch the marble or the granite or the wood… I touch God's hands. God's hands are there waiting for me… This is how, resculpting His sculptures, I understand, day by day, how inadequate I am. I am a sculptor, I am a sculpture."

Jill says, “We want our book to tell the story that begins in radiance and beauty, progressed through sin to the fall, and leads to revelation and redemption through the vast and tender love of Christ.” This is, in my view, what they have accomplished.

The new book The Shapes are Real (Cascade Books, 2025) is indeed a partnership — and I am privileged to have served as editor. Philip Yancey wrote an introduction to the work of Liviu Mocan for the book, with an afterword by myself, entitled "Polishing Mirrors For Heaven" which also appears in the McMaster Journal of Theology & Ministry. The following poem is from The Shapes are Real.

The book that reads you
------brass
------120 x 60 x 30 cm

sees you; you standing there
trying to read its opaque pages;
stiff, unbendable they seem
yet stacked with abundance
of breath between leaves and brass
that seem almost flexible..

It eyes you. Over and over
through its hieroglyphs, the tiny eyes
see all that you are, all that you
should be, all that you will be.
They are not meaning―but point
to meaning, harbingers, reflectors,

like the light from the moon―
not sun but sunlight still―
reflected yet substantial,
until the morning erases
dark illuminations and unveils
glory―
revelation the patina

covering sheen in the skin
of mercy.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Jill Peláez Baumgaertner: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Boris Pasternak*

Boris Pasternak (1890—1960) is a Russian poet, whose father was a painter who taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and whose mother was a concert pianist.

His poetry collections include My Sister, Life (1922), Second Birth (1932), and Selected Poems (1946). Pasternak is the author of just one novel, Doctor Zhivago (1957), for which he won the Nobel Prize.

At the time the Soviet government pressured him into rejecting the award. In a 1958 article interpreting these events, Time Magazine reported, “Pasternak wrote his novel Doctor Zhivago out of a passionate Christian conviction that salvation is possible only through the individual human spirit.” In Israel the novel was criticized as assimilationist, because Pasternak was in favour of his fellow-Jews converting to Christian faith.

After World War II, a series of his Christian poems on Easter themes, were said to have been written as a form of protest against communism.

The following poem draws an unlikely parallel betweeen an actor in a Shakespearean play and Christ fulfilling the role set out for him.

Hamlet

The murmurs ebb; onto the stage I enter.
I am trying, standing in the door,
To discover in the distant echoes
What the coming years may hold in store.

The nocturnal darkness with a thousand
Binoculars is focused onto me.
Take away this cup, O Abba Father,
Everything is possible to Thee.

I am fond of this Thy stubborn project,
And to play my part I am content.
But another drama is in progress,
And, this once, O let me be exempt.

But the plan of action is determined,
And the end irrevocably sealed.
I am alone; all round me drowns in falsehood:
Life is not a walk across a field.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Boris Pasternak: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

William Cullen Bryant*

William Cullen Bryant (1794—1878) is one of the most significant poets in early American history. He studied law privately and was admitted to the bar when he was 21years of age. His dislike of the profession led him and his wife to move to New York in 1829 where he became the editor of the New York Review, and shortly thereafter became editor-in-chief of the New York Evening Post; he continued in that role for the rest of his life.

His poetry collections include Thanatopsis (1817), A Forest Hymn (1824), and Poems (1839). He is known as an American Romantic for his nature poetry, being significantly influenced by William Wordsworth.

Under the influence of his father, Bryant had started shifting toward Unitarian belief away from the Calvinism of his childhood. In his blank verse poem “A Forest Hymn,” however, he demonstrated a return toward Christian orthodoxy — seeing nature as the most suited place for communion with God.

The William Cullen Bryant Homestead, in Massachusetts, is a National Historic Landmark. It is located on a hillside overlooking the Westfield River Valley, on the site of the original Cummington community which was founded in 1762.

The Battle-Field

Once this soft turf, this rivulet's sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encountered in the battle-cloud.

Ah! never shall the land forget
How gushed the life-blood of her brave, —
Gushed, warm with hope and courage yet,
Upon the soil they fought to save.

Now all is calm and fresh and still;
Alone the chirp of flittering bird,
And talk of children on the hill,
And bell of wandering kine, are heard.

No solemn host goes trailing by
The black-mouthed gun and staggering wain;
Men start not at the battle-cry, —
O, be it never heard again!

Soon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.

A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year;
A wild and many-weaponed throng
Hang on thy front and flank and rear.

Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen lot;
The timid good may stand aloof,
Men start not at the battle-cry, —
The sage may frown, — yet faint thou not.

Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, —
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.

Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who helped thee flee in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here!

Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet's mouth is pealed
The blast of triumph o'er thy grave

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about William Cullen Bryant: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Allen Tate*

Allen Tate (1899—1979) is a Southern writer, born in Kentucky and educated at Vanderbilt University, where his roommate was Robbert Penn Warren. Rather than identifying primarily as an American, he saw himself as a Southerner — holding traditional agrarian values which reflect artistic beauty, rather than adopting Yankee industrialism and materialism.

He was not naïve to the sins of the South — first among these being bigotry and slavery — nor was he seeking to turn back towards an idealized past. He wrote, “A society which has once been religious cannot, without risk of spiritual death, secularize itself.” He was essentially a critic of American culture.

His poetry collections include Mr. Pope and Other Poems (1928), The Mediterranean and Other Poems (1936), The Winter Sea (1944), and Two Conceits for the Eye to Sing, If Possible (1950), His Collected Poems appeared in 1970.

Tate was poetry editor at Sewanee Review from 1944 to 1947, and a professor of English at the University of Minnesota from 1951 until his retirement. He converted publicly to Roman Catholicism in 1950.

Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky

Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky
And I must think a little of the past:
When I was ten I told a stinking lie
That got a black boy whipped; but now at last
The going years, caught in an after-glow,
Reverse like balls englished upon green baize—
Let them return, let the round trumpets blow
The ancient crackle of the Christ's deep gaze.
Deafened and blind, with senses yet unfound,
Am I, untutored to the after-wit
Of knowledge, knowing a nightmare has no sound;
Therefore with idle hands and head I sit
In late December before the fire's daze
Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Allen Tate: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Chad Walsh*

Chad Walsh (1914—1991) wrote six poetry collections, and several other books. He served as an English professor for more than thirty years at Beloit College in Wisconsin. His name comes up frequently these days, as Beloit College has named a poetry prize in his honour, as well as the Chad Walsh Chapbook Series from Beloit Poetry Journal. His anthology Today’s Poems: American and British Poetry since the 1930s was published in 1964.

He is also remembered by C.S. Lewis devotees. It’s hard to look into Walsh without being swamped by information about him in relation to Lewis. It was through reading Lewis — particularly the novel Perelandra — that he was first drawn to faith. Walsh had first written an article about Lewis in The Atlantic Monthly, and then travelled to Oxford to interview him, in preparation for his book C.S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics (first published in 1949, and recently republished by Wipf & Stock in 2008). This book led to the growing popularity of Lewis in the US, which had already started in the UK.

A Quintina Of Crosses

Beyond, beneath, within, wherever blood,
If there were blood, flows with the pulse of love,
Where God’s circle and all orbits cross,
Through the black space of death to baby life
Came God, planting the secret genes of God.

By the permission of a maiden’s love,
Love came upon the seeds of words, broke blood,
And howled into the Palestine of life,
A baby roiled by memories of God.
Sometimes he smiled, sometimes the child was cross.

Often at night he dreamed a dream of God
And was the dream he dreamed. Often across
The lily fields he raged and lived their life,
And Heaven’s poison festered in his blood,
Loosing the passion of unthinkable love.

But mostly, though, he lived a prentice’s life
Until a singing in the surge of blood,
Making a chorus of the genes of God,
Flailed him into the tempest of a love
That lashed the North Star and the Southern Cross.

His neighbors smelled an alien in his blood,
A secret enemy and double life;
He was a mutant on an obscene cross
Outraging decency with naked love.
He stripped the last rags from a proper God.

The life of God must blood this cross for love.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Chad Walsh: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Marilyn Nelson*

Marilyn Nelson is an American poet, translator, children’s book author, professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut, and the former Poet Laureate of Connecticut. She has won several awards, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Denise Levertov Award, and the Frost Medal.

Mark Doty has said, “Nelson’s bold and sure poems long for heaven and—happily for us—continue a lifelong affair with the occasions of earth.”

In an interview with Jeanne Murray Walker she said, “I’m not particularly interested in writing about my life. I’m one of the lucky ones, with too happy a life for poetry.” This has led her to researching and writing about the lives of such people as Emmett Till, George Washington Carver, Venture Smith, and some lesser-known people.

The following poem is from For The Body (Louisiana State University Press, 1978).

Churchgoing

The Lutherans sit stolidly in rows;
only their children feel the holy ghost
that makes them jerk and bobble and almost
destroys the pious atmosphere for those
whose reverence bows their backs as if in work.
The congregation sits, or stands to sing,
or chants the dusty creeds automaton.
Their voices drone like engines, on and on,
and they remain untouched by everything;
confession, praise, or likewise, giving thanks.
The organ that they saved years to afford
repeats the Sunday rhythms song by song,
slow lips recite the credo, smother yawns,
and ask forgiveness for being so bored.

I, too, am wavering on the edge of sleep,
and ask myself again why I have come
to probe the ruins of this dying cult.
I come bearing the cancer of my doubt
as superstitious suffering women come
to touch the magic hem of a saint's robe.

Yet this has served two centuries of men
as more than superstitious cant; they died
believing simply. Women, satisfied
that this was truth, were racked and burned with them
for empty words we moderns merely chant.

We sing a spiritual as the last song,
and we are moved by a peculiar grace
that settles a new aura on the place.
This simple melody, though sung all wrong,
captures exactly what I think is faith.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
That slaves should suffer in his agony!
That Christian, slave-owning hypocrisy
nevertheless was by these slaves ignored
as they pitied the poor body of Christ!
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble,
that they believe most, who so much have lost.
To be a Christian one must bear a cross.
I think belief is given to the simple
as recompense for what they do not know.

I sit alone, tormented in my heart
by fighting angels, one group black, one white.
The victory is uncertain, but tonight
I'll lie awake again, and try to start
finding the black way back to what we've lost.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Marilyn Nelson: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu (1931—2021) is a South African theologian who served as Bishop of Johannesburg (1985—1986) and Archbishop of Cape Town (1986—1996); the first black clergyman to hold either position. He is best known for his active fight against apartheid. In 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Tutu and Mandela worked together to establish a multi-racial democracy. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984.

Archbishop Tutu is the author of An African Prayer Book. It is an anthology which includes prayer poems ranging from early fathers and mothers of the church such as Monica, Augustine, and Clement of Alexandria, to modern writers of the African diasporas. Like the following poem, most of Tutu’s poems are written as prayers.

Disturb us, O Lord

when we are too well-pleased with ourselves
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little,
because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, O Lord
when with the abundance of things we possess,
we have lost our thirst for the water of life
when, having fallen in love with time,
we have ceased to dream of eternity
and in our efforts to build a new earth,
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.
Stir us, O Lord
to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas
where storms show Thy mastery,
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.
In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes
and invited the brave to follow.
Amen

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Gregory of Nazianus*

Gregory of Nazianus (c. 320—390) is an early Church Father who championed the doctrine of the Trinity against the heresy of Arianism. Along with Basil the Great, he edited a volume of Origen’s theological and devotional writings known as Philocalia.

Gregory was Archbishop of Constantinople from 380 to 381, and served as president of the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 381.

John A. McGuckin in the Preface to The Poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2023) wrote, “Gregory elevated poetry as one of the most inspired of all ways to seek the truth, and estimated that the real poet, the profound teacher of deep truths to their generation, was the one who had quietly studied, reflected and learned the trade of expressing those truths…” The following was translated by Brian Dunkle, S.J. and is from Poems on Scripture (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2012).

Invocation Before the Reading of Scripture

Attend, O all-seeing Father of Christ, to these our petitions.
Be gracious to your servant’s evening song;
for I am one who sets his footstep on the sacred
paths, who knows God to be the only self-generate among the living
and Christ to be the king who wards off ills from mortals.
He who once, with mercy on the dread race of suffering mortals,
willingly altered his form upon the Father’s offer.
Incorruptible God, he became a mortal, in order that by his blood
he might free all who toil from the chains of Tartarus.
Come now and tend to your servant’s soul
with inspired accounts from the book of holiness and purity.
For thus you might gaze on your servants of the truth
proclaiming true life with a voice as high as heaven.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Gregory of Nazianus: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Anna Kamieńska*

Anna Kamieńska (1920—1986) is a Polish poet, translator, writer, and literary critic. Her earliest poems were published when she was just 14 in the Warsaw children’s magazine Płomyczek. During the Nazi occupation she taught in underground village schools. Later she became involved in Warsaw’s literary life, including as a book reviewer for the prestigious monthly magazine Creativity.

She has been described in Polish American Journal as “a major Polish writer, and equal to Nobel Prize winners Wislawa Szymborska and Czeslaw Milosz, [who] grew up in the horrors of Nazi occupation and Communism. She wrote 20 collections of poetry. It was after the death of her husband — the poet Jan Śpiewak when she was just 47 — that she embarked on a journey from unbelief through metaphysical wrestlings to faith. This journey may be observed both through her poetry collections, and her two-volume Notebooks.

The following poem is from Astonishments: Selected poems of Anna Kamieńska (Paraclete, 2007) and was translated from Polish by Grażyna Drabik and David Carson.

The Lamp

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us
I wait to gain wisdom from chance
I expect sense from silence
Perhaps something will suddenly happen
and pulse with hidden truth
like the spirit of the flame in the oil lamp
under which we bowed our heads
when we were very young
and grandmas crossed the bread with a knife
and we believed in everything
So now I yearn for nothing so much
as for that faith

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Anna Kamieńska: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Andrew Hudgins

Andrew Hudgins is an American poet from Alabama, who has taught at the University of Cincinnati, and Baylor University, and currently teaches at Ohio State. His first book of poems Saints and Strangers (Houghton Mifflin, 1985) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

I bought one of his books years ago — The Never-Ending (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) — when it first came out. This book contains several of the poems that associate him with the Christian faith, however whether he believes, or whether it is merely the protagonists of his poems who believe, is unclear. He often plays mischievously on the edge of heresy to unsettle his readers, such as in “Praying Drunk” and “Piss Christ.”

His American Rendering: New and Selected Poems (Ecco) appeared in 2010. The following poem appears in The Never-Ending.

Communion in the Asylum

We kneel. Some of us kneel better than others
and do not have to clutch the rail or sway
against those next to us. We hold up hands
to take the body in, and some of our hands
— a few — are firmer than the others. They
don't tremble, don't have to be held in the priest's
encircling hands and guided to our lips.
And some of us can hold the wafer, all of it,
inside our mouths. And when the careful priest
tips wine across our lips, many of us, for reverence,
don't moan or lurch or sing songs to ourselves.
But we all await the grace that's promised us.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Robert Grant

Robert Grant (1779 — 1838) is a British poet who was born in India, while his father was the chairman of the East India Company. His family returned to England in 1790. He graduated from Cambridge and became a lawyer, and later a Member of Parliament. He actively sought the removal of “disabilities” that had been imposed upon Jews since the Middle Ages — twice successfully having his bills carried through the House of Commons, only to be rejected by the House of Lords. He was knighted in 1834, and was appointed Governor of Bombay, India, that same year.

The collection Sacred Poems, by Sir Robert Graves, was published posthumously by his brother (Lord Glenelg) in 1839, with a new edition appearing in 1868 (Longmans, Green & Co.). Many of his poems are based on psalms — including “O, Worship the King” which is based on Psalm 104 and became a well-known hymn.

The following poem arose from Psalm 73:25, and has also appeared in edited form as a hymn.

Lord of Earth, Thy Forming Hand

Lord of earth! Thy forming hand
Well this beauteous frame hath planned,
Woods that wave, and hills that tower,
Ocean rolling in his power,
All that strikes the gaze unsought,
All that charms the lonely thought,
Friendship — gem transcending price,
Love — a flower from paradise,
Yet, amid this scene so fair,
Should I cease Thy smile to share,
What were all its joys to me?
Whom have I on earth but Thee?

Lord of heaven! beyond our sight
Rolls a world of purer light;
There in love’s unclouded reign,
Parted hands shall clasp again:
O! that world is passing fair;
Yet, if thou wert absent there,
What were all its joys to me?
Whom have I in heaven but Thee?

Lord of earth and heaven! my breast
Seeks in Thee its only rest;
I was lost; Thy accents mild
Homeward lured Thy wandering child.
I was blind! Thy healing ray
Charmed the long eclipse away;
Source of every joy I know,
Solace of my every woe,
O if once Thy smile divine
Cease upon my soul to shine,
What were earth or heaven to me?
Whom have I in each but Thee?

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Matthew Pullar

Matthew Pullar is an Australian poet, and the author of the new collection This Teeming Mess of Glory (Wipf & Stock, 2025). His earlier collections include The Swelling Year, Les Feuilles Mortes, and Anno Domini. In 2013 he was awarded the SparkLit Young Australian Writer of the Year Award.

As a teacher, he is a Literature and English Teacher at Heathdale Christian College, and is the Cross Curriculum Co-ordinator (First Nations) there.

Andrew Lansdown has said about Pullar’s new collection:
------“While reading Matthew Pullar’s poetry, one is struck by its
------simplicity and directness, prized qualities in any form of
------communication. His poems are mostly confessional and devotional
------in nature and are without pretension or pride. It is refreshing,
------in an age when the political and the perverse seem to predominate
------in the arts, to read poems exploring the fundamentals of human
------existence — family, faith, failure, and grace.”

The most recent post at Poems For Ephesians is also a poem by Matthew Pullar.

The following poem first appeared in Ekstasis, and is from This Teeming Mess of Glory.

Breathbodyprayer

…that form of prayer in which the soul makes use of the members
of the body to raise itself more devoutly to God. In this way the
soul, in moving the body, is moved by it.
------— The Nine Ways of Prayer of Saint Dominic

Fooled by the body’s misfirings —
the thought misdirected; the brain
connecting anguish to the neutral moment —
you cannot pray, for every
earnest ascent is duped by the pounding
head that cries out, Terror, terror
on every side. And you,
longing for peace where there
is no peace, cannot spy the waiting,
pumping heart that welcomes,
that is already here, is open.

So prayer, at these times, is as much
a breath as a hand outstretched,
an air-parched mouth gulping as it clutches clouds.
And while the body,
in its movement, stretches
its wild, warring muscles,
it wrestles and settles

encased behind the billowing
ribs of its maker,
who did not despise these scars.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Cynewulf

Cynewulf (pronounced “kin-eh-wolf”) is a 9th century poet of Old English — one of the few who are known by name, and one of only four whose work is known to survive today. There are only two manuscripts of his work which survive from the early medieval period. He is thought to have lived in Northumbria — due to the Anglian dialect of Anglo-Saxon he wrote in — and believed to be a monk or a priest, because of the sophistication of his poetry, and that he was well-educated enough to have knowledge of works written in Latin.

Because he signed each of the four long poems known to be his, with a runic acrostic signature, there is no debate as to their authorship. He has, at times, also been thought to be the author of other poetic works including The Dream of the Rood.

The following is a prose translation of the opening lines of Cynewulf’s extensive three-part poem The Christ as translated by Charles Huntington Whitman and published in 1900 by the Athenæum Press. The three sections are “The Advent,” “The Ascension,” and “The Last Judgment.”

From The Christ

Thou art the corner-stone which the builders once rejected in their work; fitting indeed is it for Thee, O king of glory, to become the head of this noble temple, and to join in bond secure the broad walls of adamantine rock, so that throughout the cities of earth all things endowed with sight may wonder evermore. Reveal then, righteous and triumphant One through Thy wisdom, Thine own handiwork, and leave wall firm against wall. The work hath need that the Master Builder, the King Himself should come forthwith restore the house that beneath its roof hath fallen into ruin. He formed the body, the limbs of clay; and now is it time for Him, the Prince of life, to deliver this miserable host from their enemies, the wretched from their fears as He full oft hath done.

O Ruler and righteous King, Thou who holdest the key and openest life, bless us with victory, with that glorious success denied unto him whose work availeth naught! Verily in our need do we speak these words: We beseech Him who created man that He chose not to pronounce judgment upon us who, sad at heart, sit yearning in prison for the sun’s joyous course until such time as the Prince of life reveal light unto us, become our soul’s defense, and compass the feeble mind with splendor; or all this may He make us worthy, we whom He admitted to glory when, deprived of our heritage, we were doomed to turn in wretchedness unto this narrow land.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Paul the Apostle

Paul the Apostle (c. 5—c. 64/65 AD), as outlined in the Acts of the Apostles, was a persecutor of the early Christian church, until Jesus spoke to him on the road to Damascus. He became the apostle to the Gentiles — journeying throughout the Roman world. He is the author of a large portion of the New Testament — written in the form of letters to individuals and to young churches in such locations as Ephesus, Galatia, Corinth, and Rome.

Perhaps due to the nature of his letters, which focus on teaching, admonishing and encouraging, he is not thought of as a poetic writer. However, Paul often used poetic descriptions to help his readers to better understand. For example, in Ephesians 6 he writes of the armour of God, comparing salvation, righteousness and faith to the armour used by Roman soldiers. Likewise, in 1 Corinthians 12 he compares people in the church to parts of the body — having the foot saying it is not as worthy as the hand to be part of the body.

The following is one of the most celebrated poetic passages in the New Testament. Often called the love chapter, it is often read at weddings, and woven into song lyrics. Joni Mitchell performs her own close paraphrase of the passage, from her 1982 album Wild Things Run Fast.

Here is the passage from the New International Version.

1 Corinthians 13

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Edith Sitwell*

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) is a modernist poet and critic. She received the Benson Medal in 1934 from the Royal Society of Literature, and in 1953 was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE).

She and her two younger brothers — Osbert and Sacheverell who both also experienced literary success — experienced a childhood of mistreatment and neglect by their parents. In 1918 she met and became friends with the poet and war hero Siegfried Sassoon. According to her biographer Richard Greene she fell in love with Sassoon, even though she knew that he was a homosexual. Similarly, she later fell in love with the gay Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, whom she helped both financially and through her influence . Edith Sitwell never did marry, but lived for many years in the company of her former governess Helen Rootham. Her flat became a meeting place for writers, several of whom she helped to become established.

In the 21st century Dame Edith Sitwell is best known for her poem “Still Falls the Rain” — a poem about the Blitz of London during WWII.

Dirge for the New Sunrise

Fifteen minutes past eight o’clock, on the
morning of Monday the 6th of August, 1945

Bound to my heart as Ixion to the wheel,
Nailed to my heart as the Thief upon the Cross
I hang between our Christ and the gap where the world was lost

And watch the phantom Sun in Famine Street
— The ghost of the heart of Man…red Cain,
And the more murderous brain
Of Man, still redder Nero that conceived the death
Of his mother Earth, and tore
Her womb, to know the place where he was conceived.

But no eyes grieved —
For none were left for tears:
They were blinded as the years

Since Christ was born. Mother or Murderer, you have given
or taken life —
Now all is one!

There was a morning when the holy Light
Was young…The beautiful First Creature came

To our water-springs, and thought us without blame.

Our hearts seemed safe in our breasts and sang to the light —
The marrow in the bone
We dreamed was safe…the blood in the veins, the sap in the tree
Were springs of the Deity.

But I saw the little Ant-men as they ran
Carrying the world’s weight of the world’s filth
And the filth in the heart of Man —
Compressed till those lusts and greeds had a greater heat than
that of the Sun.

And the ray from that heat came soundless, shook the sky
As if in search for food, and squeezed the stems
Of all that grows on the earth till they were dry.
The eyes that saw, the lips that kissed, are gone
— Or black as thunder lie and grin at the murdered Sun.

The living blind and seeing dead together lie
As if in love…There was no more hating then —
And no more love: Gone is the heart of Man.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Edith Sitwell: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Jonathan Chan

Jonathan Chan is a Singapore poet and translator whose second book bright sorrow has just appeared from Landmark Books. Born in Manhattan to a Malaysian father and a South Korean mother, educated at Cambridge and Yale, he was raised in Singapore and has returned there after his years at university. His first collection going home (Landmark Books, 2022). was a finalist for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2024. Part of what he explores in that book is the sense of what home is when a single locale may or may not be the home one is going to.

He is Managing Editor for the poetry archive Poetry.sg. His poetry is widely published; I personally have selected his poems for Ekstasis, and for Poems For Ephesians, as well as for a forthcoming anthology of Christmas poems in the Poiema Poetry Series.

Jonathan Chan has said, “matters of faith are integral and inherent to my writing” — while Christian Wiman has said, “Jonathan Chan’s poems are distinctively musical, acutely observed, and existentially engaged at the deepest level. They are bracing to discover.”

The following poem is from bright sorrow.

eternity

after Marilynne Robinson

and so the old man said
eternity is a thing we have

no hope of understanding.
things happen the way

that they do. a note follows another
in a song. a song is itself and

not another. a song is a song
itself. eternity holds space for

all these songs. for a song is
like a life, resounding in a kind

of tune. lives are what they were
and have been. lives are not merely

every worst thing. a mother prays
for her scoundrel son to be taken

up into heaven. Lila thinks this
an injustice to the scoundrels

with no mothers. people try
to get by. people are good

by their own lights. people take
all the courage that they have

to be good. for in eternity,
to eternity, eternity is just

a thing.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Peter Levi*

Peter Levi (1931―2000) is a poet, translator, novelist, and scholar. He wrote more than 60 books, including fiction, biography, poetry, and travel writing. He was raised in a devout Catholic family, where all three siblings chose a vocation within the church — he and his brother became Jesuit priests, and his sister a Bernadine nun.

He was a classics tutor at Campion Hall, Oxford from 1965 to 1977, then left the Jesuit order for marriage and a literary life. When asked why, he replied, "It was love."

In an interview with the Paris Review around the time he left the priesthood he was asked about his experience and his view of the sermon as a creative medium. He replied,
------"Oh I think it’s very interesting. Donne’s sermons are wonderful.
------An opportunity not open to most human beings of having a captive
------audience. I think it is much unexploited and I think it has
------thrilling potentialities, but of course only if you happen to
------believe what you’re saying. And it so happens that I did. I mildly
------regret not being able to preach any more sermons."

Peter Levi was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1984 to 1989. The following excerpts are from his long poem “Ruined Abbeys.”

From Ruined Abbeys

------Monastic limestone skeleton,
------threadbare with simple love of life
------speak out your dead language of stone,
------the wind’s hammer, the sun’s knife,
------the sweet apple of solitude;
------there is a ninth beatitude:
------a child in his simplicity
------is more than a just man can be.

It is not a poem that is easy to analyse, dwelling in the physicality of abandoned stone structures, and in Levi’s experience of how words take on a life of their own.

------Watching all this in an armchair
------consider what these ruins are,
------desolate spirits in the air
------singing in their stone languages
------what religion is not and is,
------not a museum but a stone
------no man can understand alone:

The stanza I would particularly like to highlight is the following — from toward the end of this 417-line poem.

------It ends in death, the old land.
------Darkness climbs into the sky.
------There is nothing left in your hand.
------It gives you no guide to go by.
------Or nothing that a stinging-nettle
------on a bleak stone will not unsettle.
------You who believe my true story
------are not protected from history.
------What can I say about death;
------their death is hidden from my eyes:
------but I believe that the dead rise,
------having been roused by the strong breath
------of my God who is in heaven,
------when the trumpet tears earth open.

To read the entire poem, follow this link.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Peter Levi: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Toyohiko Kagawa

Toyohiko Kagawa (1888—1960) is a Japanese reformer, activist, pacifist, poet, and novelist. He was orphaned at age four, and was cared for by American missionaries. Once he declared his faith in Christ, he was disowned by his extended family. In 1909 he moved into a slum in Kobe, Japan, in order to serve the people, but found it hard to make a difference there.

He became active in various reforms, frequently facing rebuke from government authorities, such as being arrested twice in 1921 and 1922 for his part in labour strikes. Similarly, after writing an apology in 1940 to China for Japan’s invasion, he was twice arrested for “antiwar thoughts”.

After WWII, however, he was influential as an advisor to the transitional government, seeing such reforms as the legalization of unions, women’s suffrage, and land redistribution.

Kagawa wrote more than one hundred fifty books, including bestselling novels. He was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, and four times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Discovery

I cannot invent new things
Like the airships
Which sail
On silver wings
But today
A Wonderful Thought
In the dawn was given
And the stripes on my robe
Shining from wear
Were suddenly fair
Bright with a Light
Falling from heaven
Gold, Silver and Bronze
Lights from the windows of Heaven
And the Thought was this:
That a Secret Plan
Is hid in my Hand
Big,
Because of this plan,
That God
Who dwells in my hand
Knows this secret plan
Of the things He will do for the world
Using my Hand!

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Katharine Tynan*

Katharine Tynan (1859—1931) is an Irish poet who was raised Catholic, educated at the Dominican Convent of St. Catherine, and married a Protestant barrister. They then lived in England for many years. To call her a prolific writer would be an understatement; she wrote over 100 novels, a dozen books of short stories, and more than a dozen poetry collections. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1930.

Her writing often dwells on matters of faith, concern for the poor, feminism, and the landscape of Ireland. She wrote many poems about the human impact of World War I.

In 1907 the Dun Emer Press produced a limited-edition handmade collection of her poetry called Twenty One Poems written by Katharine Tynan: Selected by W.B. Yeats. The press, in fact, was an ambitious project of Yeats’ sisters and a friend who produced cards, broadsheets, and literary books.

The following is the opening poem in Twenty One Poems. Another poem from this collection is the current selection at my journal Poems For Ephesians.

Sheep and Lambs

All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road.

The sheep with their little lambs
Passed me by on the road;
All in the April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary and crying
With a weak, human cry.
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

Up in the blue, blue mountains
Dewy pastures are sweet;
Rest for the little bodies,
Rest for the little feet.

But for the Lamb of God,
Up on the hill-top green,
Only a Cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.

All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad;
I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Katharine Tynan: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

R.S. Thomas*

R.S. Thomas (1913―2000) is the great twentieth century poet of Wales. It wasn’t until his fourth collection appeared from a mainstream London publisher in 1955 that he caught the attention and praise of the influential BBC radio program The Critics. That same volume won the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Award.

In 1937 he was ordained a priest in the Anglican Church of Wales, where he served in small rural parishes until his retirement in 1978. When he met his wife Mildred, she had already earned a reputation as an artist; this stirred in him the desire to make his mark as a poet.

Much of his poetry is set on the harsh, bald Welsh hills where lone farmers scrape out a meagre existence, or in dark, empty churches where the poet wrestles with the silence of God. A.E. Dyson wrote of him in Critical Quarterly,
------"In Christian terms Thomas is not a poet of the transfiguration,
------of the resurrection, of human holiness.... He is a poet of the
------Cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness,
------and his theology of Jesus, in particular, seems strange against
------any known traditional norm."

His Collected Poems appeared in 1993, and his Collected Later Poems in 2004 — which gathers his last five volumes, including the posthumous book Residues.

Resurrection

Easter. The grave clothes of winter
are still here, but the sepulchre
is empty. A messenger
from the tomb tells us
how a stone has been rolled
from the mind, and a tree lightens
the darkness with its blossom.
There are travellers upon the road
who have heard music blown
from a bare bough, and a child
tells us how the accident
of last year, a machine stranded
beside the way for lack
of petrol, is crowned with flowers.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about R.S. Thomas: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Mary Oliver*

Mary Oliver (1935—2019) is a poet who encourages us all to reflect upon, and learn from, the things we observe. Her poems are simple, yet profound, drawing us into the natural world through small, specific details — such as in “When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention” she has them say, “Then we will drop / foil by foil to the ground. This / is our unalterable task, and we do it / joyfully.” There is a calm, submissiveness here, that speaks of her faith in the rightness of the world God has made.

Despite the immense popularity of her poetry, little has been written in the way of critical studies — probably because there’s little that can be said to analyse it, other than to let the poems say what they want to say.

In 2017, Penguin published Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, of which the Chicago Tribune said, “It’s as if the poet herself has sidled beside the reader and pointed us to the poems she considers most worthy of deep consideration.” This would be a worthwhile place to encounter her work, although I am still partial to the very first collection of hers I purchased: Thirst (Beacon Press, 2006).

She remains difficult to pin down, despite being transparent and honest in her self-disclosure. She prays, in her 2008 collection Red Bird —
----Maker of All Things…
----let me abide in your shadow—
----let me hold on
----to the edge of your robe
----as you determine
----what you must let be lost
----and what will be saved.

After having lived for over forty years in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she moved to the southeast coast of Florida; she died there in 2019. The following poem is from Thirst.

Gethsemane

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.

Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.

The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet,
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body,
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.

Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move, maybe
the lake far away, where once he walked as on a blue pavement,
lay still and waited, wild awake.

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not
keep that vigil, how they must have wept,
so utterly human, knowing this too
must be a part of the story.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Mary Oliver: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) was born in Cambridge and educated at the university there. He was a writer, and cleric in the Church of England, who benefitted from the patronage of William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor of Oxford University. Through these connections Taylor became a chaplain to Charles I, and during the Civil War in 1642 moved to Oxford along with the king’s court. All this led to his being imprisoned several times by the Parliamentary government, after Laud was executed.

His devotional books: The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living (1650) and The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651) are among his most influential writings.

After the Restoration, Taylor was made Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland, later becoming Vice-Chancellor of the University of Dublin.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ranked the work of Jeremy Taylor extremely high, placing him as one of the four great writers of English literature along with Shakespeare, Bacon and Milton — and wrote that few days pass in which he does not read and meditate on Taylor.

The 1991 collection Jeremy Taylor: Selected Writings (Carcanet) was edited by poet C.H. Sisson.

The following original poem was also successfully revised, for use in the Sarum Hymnal according to Arthur E. Gregory in his study The Hymn-Book of the Modern Church.

Hymn for Advent: or Christ's Coming to Jerusalem in Triumph

---------Lord, come away,
---------Why dost Thou stay?
Thy road is ready: and Thy paths, made strait,
---------With longing expectation wait
----The consecration of Thy beauteous feet.
Ride on triumphantly; behold we lay
Our lusts and proud wills in Thy way.
Hosanna! welcome to our hearts. Lord, here
Thou hast a temple too, and full as dear
As that of Sion; and as full of sin;
Nothing but thieves and robbers dwell therein,
Enter, and chase them forth, and cleanse the floor;
Crucify them, that they may never more
---------Profane that holy place,
----Where Thou hast chose to set Thy face.
And then if our stiff tongues shall be
Mute in the praises of Thy Deity,
----The stones out of the temple wall
---------Shall cry aloud, and call
Hosanna! and Thy glorious footsteps greet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes

Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is the current Poet Laureate of Arkansas. Some of her recent poetry collections include, The Perfume of Pain (Kelsay Books, 2024), and Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems (Paraclete Press, 2021).

She has taught creative writing at King University in Bristol, Tennessee, and at St. Leo University in St. Leo, Florida; she is also a former artist-in-residence at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where — in a residential program for formerly incarcerated women — she led poetry workshops, resulting in a book of their creative writing: Today There Have Been Lovely Things. She and other poets also share poetry with Alzheimer’s residents in a Fayetteville memory care center.

The following poem first appeared in The Christian Century. (The Swahili words Kibanda matope mean mud hut.)

Traveling light

I caught the gleam of her silver bracelet
as she stroked her son’s back in church
that Sunday the missionary came.
The gesture invited a burst of sunlight
that poured through the stained glass
and over our shoulders, down the aisles,
swam through our ribs to reach the world’s night side.
Imagine the miracle. Loving her son that instant
changes the plight of the ninth child
in the kibanda matope, the one the missionary
said was born blind and given the most meager
share of meal in preference to others
who needed more to live, but he comes to see
after all because someone was sent,
and the light is always looking.

This post was suggested by the poet James Owens.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

Walter Chalmers Smith

Walter Chalmers Smith (1824—1908) is a Scottish poet, hymnist, and novelist who served as a minister in the Free Church of Scotland, pastoring congregations in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Like George MacDonald (who was five days younger) he was born in Aberdeen; both men became ministers and authors, and both were hesitance to accept unquestioningly the status quo.

He was an evangelical who in 1866 published Discourses promoting less stringent Sunday observances than were common in Scotland. This led to him being "affectionately admonished" by the General Assembly of his Presbytery. Despite this, by 1893, he was chosen their new moderator.

The first of his many poetry collections The Bishop’s Walk (Macmillan) was published in 1861 under the pseudonym Orwell Smith — (Orwell being the name of the parish he served in from 1853 to1857). His gothic novel Olrig Grange appeared under the name Hermann Knott in 1872 — with a fourth edition published in 1888. His Poetical Works (Dent) appeared in 1902. However, he is best remembered today as the author of the following hymn.

Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
Thy justice like mountains high soaring above
Thy clouds which are fountains of goodness and love.

To all life thou givest — to both great and small;
In all life thou livest, the true life of all;
We blossom and flourish as leaves on the tree,
And wither and perish—but nought changeth thee.

Great Father of glory, pure Father of light,
Thine angels adore thee, all veiling their sight;
All laud we would render: O help us to see
’Tis only the splendour of light hideth thee.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Poiema/Cascade), and three anthologies — available through Wipf & Stock. His new book The Role of the Moon, inspired by the Metaphysical Poets, is forthcoming from Paraclete Press.

John Milton*

John Milton (1608—1674) is one of England’s greatest writers, and one who wrote during very tempestuous times. He was outspoken on political and ecclesiastical matters, when it was safer to keep such views to himself. His Areopagitica (1644) gained wide attention for his condemnation of censorship, and allied him publicly with the parliamentary cause.

As a Puritan he wrote tracts criticizing the High-church party within the Anglican establishment, while politically he criticized the government of Charles I. In 1649, after the parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State. His role was to write in support of Cromwell’s government.

In 1660, at the Restoration of the monarchy, a warrant was issued for Milton’s arrest, his writings were burnt, and he went into hiding. He was briefly imprisoned, until influential friends, including Andrew Marvell, were able to have him released.

John Milton is revered as the author of Paradise Lost (1667) — his great epic about the Fall of mankind, and the hope of salvation through Christ. It became one of the most widely read works of English literature well into the Romantic period, influencing such poets as Blake, Shelley and Keats.

The Lord Will Come and Not be Slow

The Lord will come and not be slow,
his footsteps cannot err;
before him righteousness shall go,
his royal harbinger.
Truth from the earth, like to a flower,
shall bud and blossom then;
and justice, from her heavenly bower,
look down on mortal men.

Surely to such as do him fear
salvation is at hand!
And glory shall ere long appear
to dwell within our land.
Rise, God, judge thou the earth in might,
this wicked earth redress;
for thou art he who shalt by right
the nations all possess.

The nations all whom thou hast made
shall come, and all shall frame
to bow them low before thee, Lord,
and glorify thy Name.
For great thou art, and wonders great
by thy strong hand are done:
thou in thy everlasting seat
remainest God alone.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about John Milton: first post, second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.