John Donne*

John Donne (1572―1631) is one of England’s most influential poets. In his early career Donne spent his inheritance on women and extensive travel, writing erotic poetry and satires. However, in his latter years he dedicated himself to being a priest and to writing poetry of the kingdom. He served as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1621 to 1631.

Donne is one of the two most significant poets, along with George Herbert, known as the Metaphysicals. For me these poets are of personal significance, as they have influenced me in my poetry for a long time. Most recently, my book The Role of the Moon features poems in conversation with these poets — including 19 poems inspired by each of John Donne’s 19 Holy Sonnets.

I say in the introduction to this new poetry book, “It is hardly a clear category, but Metaphysical Poets to me simply mean those who use metaphors ― sometimes elaborate, extensive metaphors known as conceits ― to talk about ideas outside of human sense perception. Because these poets were deeply dedicated to their Christian faith ― Herbert, Donne, and Traherne being Anglican priests ― much of their poetry expresses their wrestlings with God, and with their own weaknesses.”

Holy Sonnet VII

At the round earth's imagin'd corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scatter'd bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou'hadst seal'd my pardon with thy blood.

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

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

Richard Crashaw*

Richard Crashaw (c.1613—1649) is an English poet who was influenced by the Metaphysical poets, and by Spanish and Italian poetry — particularly the Italian Giambattista Marino. The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry says that Crashaw “was revived early in the twentieth century as a 'Metaphysical' poet and as a member of the 'School of Donne'. In some ways that classification was advantageous to his status, because he gained a degree of recognition by riding on Donne's coat-tails in the great wave of popularity.” The great disadvantage, however, is that Crashaw’s verse has less in common with Donne than the other Metaphysical poets, and was therefore judged harshly.

Because Crashaw was a Catholic sympathiser, he fled to France in 1644 to avoid persecution by Oliver Cromwell's Puritans. There he converted to Catholicism. His friend Abraham Cowley found him living in poverty in Paris, and introduced him to Henrietta Maria, Charles I's queen, who sent him to Rome.

This is an extremely truncated version of the poem which appears in his book Steps to the Temple. It is spoken by “the three kings” having the following stanzas alternately voiced by the various magi.

from A Hymn for the Epiphany

Look up, sweet Babe, look up and see!
For love of thee,
Thus far from home
The East is come
To seek herself in thy sweet eyes.

We who strangely went astray,
Lost in a bright
Meridian night;

A darkness made of too much day;

Beckoned from far
By thy fair star,
Lo, at last have found our way.

To thee, thou Day of Night! thou East of West!
Lo, we at last have found the way
To thee, the world's great universal East,
The general and indifferent day.

All-circling point! all-centring sphere!
The world's one round eternal year ...

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Richard Crashaw: first post, second post.

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

George Herbert*

George Herbert (1593–1633) is an English poet, priest, and orator, who was a member of Parliament briefly during 1624 and 1625.

The two most influential of the seventeenth century English metaphysical poets are George Herbert and John Donne. These poets are significant to the legacy of Christian poetry in the English language, and their influences stretches into other languages as well. Some of the other metaphysical poets include Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Traherne, Richard Crashaw, and Joseph Beaumont.

The work of these poets has influenced my own poetry, and the work of so many of the other poets I admire. The very first post here at Kingdom Poets, from back in 2010, is one about George Herbert.

One of the poems in my forthcoming collection Pride Be Not Death (& Other Poems) is a response to Herbert’s poem “Love (3),” another comes from his “Perirrhanterium,” another is after “Denials,” and a fourth arises from a line in the following Herbert poem.

The Cross

---------What is this strange and uncouth thing?
To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,
Until I had some place, where I might sing,
---------And serve thee; and not only I,
But all my wealth and family might combine
To set thy honour up, as our design.
---------And then when after much delay,
Much wrestling, many a combat, this dear end,
So much desired, is giv’n, to take away
---------My power to serve thee; to unbend
All my abilities, my designs confound,
And lay my threat’nings bleeding on the ground.
---------One ague dwelleth in my bones,
Another in my soul (the memory
What I would do for thee, if once my groans
---------Could be allowed for harmony):
I am in all a weak disabled thing,
Save in the sight thereof, where strength doth sting.
---------Besides, things sort not to my will,
Ev’n when my will doth study thy renown:
Thou turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,
---------Taking me up to throw me down:
So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,
I am to grief alive, to them as dead.
---------To have my aim, and yet to be
Further from it then when I bent my bow;
To make my hopes my torture, and the fee
---------Of all my woes another woe,
Is in the midst of delicates to need,
And ev’n in Paradise to be a weed.
---------Ah my dear Father, ease my smart!
These contrarieties crush me: these crosse actions
Do wind a rope about, and cut my heart:
---------And yet since these thy contradictions
Are properly a crosse felt by the Sonne,
With but four words, my words, Thy will be done.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about George Herbert: 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.

Micheal O'Siadhail*

Micheal O'Siadhail is Poet-in-Residence at Union Theological Seminary. He is an Irish poet whose poetry is characterized by formalist structures. After having already published more than a dozen previous collections, he set for himself ambitious tasks with his recent books.

His Testament (Baylor University Press, 2022) is O'Siadhail collection of 150 psalms, plus 50 more poems that connect with the stories of the gospels ― a book which numbers 230 pages of poetry.

Even more ambitious is The Five Quintets (Baylor, 2018) ― which is described by Jeremy Begbie as, “…the culmination of an extraordinary life’s work…vast in scope. O’Siadhail attempts nothing less than an exploration of the predicaments of Western modernity as they appear in five fields of human endeavor: science, arts, economics, politics, and philosophy and theology.” This 350-page poem dialogues with such poets as Dante, Donne, Milton, Baudelaire, and T.S. Eliot, but also with dozens of significant historical figures such as Bach, Chagall, Karl Marx, and Margaret Thatcher.

I want to highlight this significant poet at this time, as Micheal O'Siadhail will be the guest of Imago for a reading at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church in Toronto on September 20th, 2023 accompanied by jazz pianist Mike Jansen: (learn more!)

The following submerged sonnet is from the larger work.

From The Five Quintets

John Milton, I admire your self-belief
That you’re another Dante London-born
To set the ways of God in high relief―
I know the cost of what delights you scorn.
Although fame-spurred you live laborious days
With Providence still in the common grain;
To want to prove God’s ways itself betrays
Enlightenment that thinks it must explain.
Rebirth all earned, for you no grace comes free,
Afraid you’ll hide your talent in the earth
While your taskmaster watches from above;
Your judging carpenter from Galilee
Keeps measuring in virtue and self-worth.
How could we justify a God of love?

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Micheal O'Siadhail: first 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.

Robert B. Shaw

Robert B. Shaw is the author of What Remains to Be Said: New and Selected Poems (2022, Pinyon) which includes verse from his seven earlier collections. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and has taught at both Harvard and Yale. The two poetry-related nonfiction books he has written ― The Call of God: The Theme of Vocation in the Poetry of Donne and Herbert (1981), and Blank Verse: A Guide to Its History and Use (2007) ― parallel Shaw’s poetic work.

When interviewed by Ryan Wilson for Literary Matters he said, “I haven’t very often made religious sentiments paramount in my work, but because they have shaped my view of existence, they are there to be found in more than a few poems. I think that in certain pieces my view of nature can broadly be termed sacramental. I may not have intended that in every case when I sat down to write, but it is what emerged.”

The last of the “new” poems in What Remains to Be Said concludes with the following hope concerning his poems:
----------"Let them give homage to the Word
----------"by whom the leaves of life are stirred.
----------"What I write now, let them say then.
----------"And let the last word be Amen.

The following poem first appeared in The Hudson Review, subsequently in The Best American Poetry 1998, in his 1999 collection Below The Surface, this year in the new anthology Christian Poetry in America Since 1940, and in his new volume What Remains to Be Said.

A Geode

What started out a glob of molten mud
hawked up by some Brazilian volcano
back in the Pleistocene is now a rock
of unremarkable appearance, brown
as ordinary mud and baseball-size.
Picking it up produces a surprise:
besides a pleasant heftiness, a sound
of sloshing can be noticed. Vapors caught
within its cooling crust were liquified,
and linger still: a million-year-old vintage.
Although one might recall the once ubiquitous
snowstorm-in-a-glass-globe paperweights,
this offers us no view inside to gauge
the wild weather a shake or two incites.
Turbulence masked by hard opacity . . .
If we could, which would we rather see?—
age-old distillate, infant tears of the earth,
or gem-like crystal of the inner walls
harboring them like some fair reliquary?
To see the one we'd have to spill the other.
Better to keep it homely and intact,
a witness to the worth of hiddenness,
which, in regard to our own kind, we call
reticence, and in terms of higher things,
mystery. Let the elixir drench unseen
the facets that enshrine it, world without end.

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.

Henry King

Henry King (1592―1669) is one of the poets T.S. Eliot identified as among the metaphysical poets, calling him familiarly Bishop King. King became Bishop of Chichester in 1642, but had his living, his library, and the rectory taken from him by the Parliamentary forces who had ceased power. He was reinstated at Charles II’s restoration in 1660.

Henry King’s father was the influential John King, Bishop of London who died in 1621. Rumours circulated at that time of a deathbed conversion to Catholicism, which Henry refuted in a sermon.

Henry King was friends with such poets as Ben Jonson, Izaak Walton, and John Donne ― eventually serving as Donne’s literary executor. King is primarily known today for “The Exequy,” an elegy written at the death of his first wife in 1624.

A poetry collection Poems, Elegies, Paradoxes, and Sonets, appeared under his name in 1657, although not prepared by him, and containing some poems that are not his. A selection entitled Poems and Psalms was published in 1843. His body is buried in Chichester Cathedral.

A Penitential Hymn

Hearken O God unto a Wretches cries
Who low dejected at thy footstool lies.
Let not the clamour of my heinous sin
Drown my requests, which strive to enter in
At those bright gates, which always open stand
To such as beg remission at thy hand.
Too well I know, if thou in rigour deal
I can not pardon ask, nor yet appeal:
To my hoarse voice, heaven will no audience grant,
But deaf as brass, and hard as adamant
Beat back my words; therefore I bring to thee
A gracious Advocate to plead for me.
What though my leprous soul no Jordan can
Recure, nor floods of the lav'd Ocean
Make clean? yet from my Saviours bleeding side
Two large and medicinable rivers glide.
Lord, wash me where those streams of life abound,
And new Bethesdas flow from every wound.
If I this precious Lather may obtain,
I shall not then despair for any stain;
I need no Gileads balm, nor oil, nor shall
I for the purifying Hyssop call:
My spots will vanish in His purple flood,
And Crimson there turn white, though washed with blood.
See Lord! with broken heart and bended knee,
How I address my humble suit to Thee;
O give that suit admittance to thy ears
Which floats to thee not in my words but tears:
And let my sinful soul this mercy crave
Before I fall into the silent grave.

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.

Ben Jonson*

Ben Jonson (1572—1637) is a British playwright and poet who spent time in prison on several occasions, both for his actions and for what he had written. In 1597 he was imprisoned for alleged seditious content in the unfinished satire The Isle of Dogs which Jonson had been hired to complete — and in 1605 for the collaboration Eastward Ho! which included a joke at the king’s expense.

Early on he found popularity with such satirical plays as Every Man in His Humour (1598), and Bartholomew Fair (1614). He later became popular in the court of James I, becoming unofficial Poet Laureate in 1616; for several years after this he focused on writing masques for presentation at court.

His early poetry, like his plays, often create witty portraits exposing human follies and vices. To me, his most-engaging works for today’s readers are his rich devotional poems which express the depth of his personal faith.

Jonson admired, and was admired by, such contemporaries as John Donne, and William Shakespeare; he was also influential on the generation of younger poets that followed, including Robert Herrick, and Richard Lovelace. A large crowd of mourners attended his funeral; his body is buried at Westminster Abbey.

To Heaven

Good and great God, can I not think of thee
But it must straight my melancholy be?
Is it interpreted in me disease
That, laden with my sins, I seek for ease?
Oh be thou witness, that the reins dost know
And hearts of all, if I be sad for show,
And judge me after; if I dare pretend
To ought but grace or aim at other end.
As thou art all, so be thou all to me,
First, midst, and last, converted one, and three;
My faith, my hope, my love; and in this state
My judge, my witness, and my advocate.
Where have I been this while exiled from thee?
And whither rapt, now thou but stoop'st to me?
Dwell, dwell here still. O, being everywhere,
How can I doubt to find thee ever here?
I know my state, both full of shame and scorn,
Conceived in sin, and unto labour borne,
Standing with fear, and must with horror fall,
And destined unto judgment, after all.
I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is ground
Upon my flesh to inflict another wound.
Yet dare I not complain, or wish for death
With holy Paul, lest it be thought the breath
Of discontent; or that these prayers be
For weariness of life, not love of thee.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Ben Jonson: first 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.

Robert Southwell*

Robert Southwell (1561―1595) is an English poet who was first educated in France, and then joined the Jesuits in Rome. In 1586 he returned as an illegal missionary to Protestant England, becoming the domestic chaplain to Anne Howard, whose husband the Earl of Arundel was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Once Southwell himself was captured, he was tortured by authorities trying to learn of the activities of other Catholics. He was later placed in solitary confinement in the Tower of London for over two years, before being executed for treason.

Southwell wrote exclusively religious poetry, seeking to turn readers’ attention away from pagan and classical themes. His literary significance at the time of his death is reflected in his influence on such writers as Donne, Herbert and Crashaw, and through several allusions to his work in Shakespeare’s plays.

The following poem plays with the paradoxes of the Word who made the world coming into the world as a newborn babe.

“The Nativity of Christ”

Behold the father is his daughter’s son,
The bird that built the nest is hatched therein,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin,
The Word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.
O dying souls, behold your living spring;
O dazzled eyes, behold your sun of grace;
Dull ears, attend what word this Word doth bring;
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace.
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs,
This life, this light, this Word, this joy repairs.
Gift better than himself God doth not know;
Gift better than his God no man can see.
This gift doth here the giver given bestow;
Gift to this gift let each receiver be.
God is my gift, himself he freely gave me;
God’s gift am I, and none but God shall have me.
Man altered was by sin from man to beast;
Beast’s food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh.
Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed
As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh.
O happy field wherein this fodder grew,
Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Richard Southwell: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

John Donne*

John Donne (1572―1631) is renowned as the preeminent metaphysical poet of his time. During his lifetime he was better known as a preacher ― elected as Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in 1621.

His poetry was influential upon English poets of his day, and for about thirty years after his death, but it fell out of favour for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was little read until championed by such modernist poets as W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot.

Rather than writing his poems for publication, Donne released his poems by sharing them in manuscript form, from which they were often copied by his admirers. Before his death, he had only authorized the publication of two of his poems, although two years after his death the first printed edition of his poetry appeared.

Most of his poems were written before he overcame his feelings of unworthiness enough to become an Anglican cleric. In his latter years he focussed on his prose writing, including Devotions upon Emergent Occasions which were published in 1624, and on writing his sermons. When Donne’s Sermons: Selected Passages, were published in 1919, they were praised in the secular literary world as “the very genius of oratory... [and] a masterpiece of English prose.”

The following poem is from his Holy Sonnets.

X

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

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

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

Joseph Brodsky*

Joseph Brodsky (1940―1996) is a Russian poet whose Orthodox family baptised him in the tradition of that church in 1942. Although Brodsky’s poetry is not overtly political, he was arrested and eventually exiled. His focus on personal themes, and the meaning of existence, was unsettling to the Soviet authorities.

His poetry is not overtly religious, in most cases. Moscow writer and literary critic Vladimir Bondarenko, however, is convinced that the Christmas poems Brodsky wrote annually for thirty years express a faith which is “the key line and motif of his poetry and possibly the only thing he reflected about in earnest without a shade of irony, so inherent to him.” His Nativity Poems were published posthumously as a collection in 2001.

Brodsky’s Selected Poems (1973), translated by George L. Kline, incudes the notable 213-line poem “Elegy for John Donne.” The following poem was also translated by George L. Kline

In villages God does not live only...

In villages God does not live only
in icon corners, as the scoffers claim,
but plainly, everywhere. He sanctifies
each roof and pan, divides each double door.
In villages God acts abundantly―
cooks lentils in iron pots on Saturdays,
dances a lazy jig in flickering flames,
and winks at me, witness to all of this.
He plants a hedge, and gives away a bride
(the groom's a forester), and, for a joke,
he makes it certain that the game warden
will never hit the duck he's shooting at.
The chance to know and witness all of this,
amidst the whistling of the autumn mist,
is, I would say, the only touch of bliss
that's open to the village atheist.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Joseph Brodsky: first post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection is Ampersand (2018, Cascade). His books are available through Amazon, and Wipf & Stock, including the anthologies The Turning Aside, and Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse.

George Herbert*

George Herbert (1593—1633) is one of English literature's most influential poets — despite of, or because of, his unapologetic preoccupation with his relationship with Christ.

He was born in Montgomery Castle, in Wales. After his father's death, when he was three years old, his mother moved the family to England. She became a patron to the poet John Donne, and her son soon started developing his own poetic skill. He was elected Orator at Cambridge University in 1620, but eventually left that post to become an Anglican priest, serving in Wiltshire, England. He wrote about his experience in his book, The Country Parson, His Character and Rule of Holy Life (1630). He died of Tuberculosis.

The very first post in this Kingdom Poets blog — from February of 2010 — featured the poetry of George Herbert.

Christmas

All after pleasures as I rid one day,
------My horse and I, both tired, body and mind,
------With full cry of affections, quite astray;
I took up the next inn I could find.
There when I came, whom found I but my dear,
------My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
------Of pleasures brought me to him, ready there
To be all passengers' most sweet relief?
O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light,
------Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger;
------Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right,
To man of all beasts be not thou a stranger:
------Furnish and deck my soul, that thou mayst have
------A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.

The shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
------------------My God, no hymn for thee?
My soul's a shepherd too; a flock it feeds
------------------Of thoughts, and words, and deeds.
The pasture is thy word: the streams, thy grace
------------------Enriching all the place.
Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
------------------Out-sing the day-light hours.
Then will we chide the sun for letting night
------------------Take up his place and right:
We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
------------------Himself the candle hold.
I will go searching, till I find a sun
------------------Shall stay, till we have done;
A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
------------------As frost-nipped suns look sadly.
Then will we sing, and shine all our own day,
------------------And one another pay:
His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,
Till ev'n His beams sing, and my music shine.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about George Herbert: first post, second post, fourth post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Izaak Walton

Izaak Walton (1593—1683) is a writer with the temperament of a fly fisherman. He wrote brief biographies of such writers as John Donne, and George Herbert which were collected into a volume often referred to as Walton's Lives. He is best known for his book The Compleat Angler — first published in 1653, but casually amended throughout the remainder of his life.

He was born in Strafford, but by 1614 he had an Ironmonger's shop in London's Fleet Street. During this time he became a verger and church warden, becoming a close friend of the vicar John Donne.

In 1644 he moved to a rural property he had purchased along a riverbank. It's been said that the last forty years of his life were spent visiting eminent clergymen and others who enjoyed fishing.

Lines On A Portrait Of Donne In His Eighteenth Year

This was for youth, Strength, Mirth, and wit that Time
Most count their golden Age; but t'was not thine.
Thine was thy later years, so much refined
From youth's Dross, Mirth & wit; as thy pure mind
Thought (like the Angels) nothing but the Praise
Of thy Creator, in those last, best Days.
Witness this Book, (thy Emblem) which begins
With Love; but ends, with Sighs, & Tears for sins.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Henry Vaughan*

Henry Vaughan (1622?—1655) was born in Wales. He and his twin brother, Thomas, entered Jesus College at Oxford in 1638. Thomas became a noted philosopher after graduation, however Henry left to pursue a law career in London before attaining his degree. At the outbreak of the English Civil War, Henry returned to Wales and dedicated himself to military service in the Royalist cause.

Vaughan's early verse is typical of the "Sons of Ben" who were followers of Ben Jonson. After a spiritual awakening in 1648, Henry Vaughan's poetry demonstrates the influence of metaphysical poets such as John Donne, and especially of George Herbert. He acknowledges the spiritual influence of Herbert: "whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts, of whom I am the least."

Palm Sunday

Hark! how the children shrill and high
Hosanna cry,
Their joys provoke the distant sky,
Where thrones and seraphims reply,
And their own angels shine and sing
In a bright ring:
Such young, sweet mirth
Makes heaven and earth
Join in a joyful symphony.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Henry Vaughan: first post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Margo Swiss

Margo Swiss is a Toronto poet who has published two collections, Crossword: A Woman's Narrative, and her new book The Hatching of the Heart (Poiema Poetry Series/Cascade Books). It has been my privilege to work with Margo in bringing this book to publication. She is also the editor of the anthology Poetry As Liturgy (2007). She and her husband, David Kent, founded the St. Thomas Poetry Series in 1996—an important imprint for the growth of Canadian Christian poetry.

She has published essays on John Donne and John Milton, and teaches Humanities and Creative Writing at York University.

Living Water
(John 4:10)

Light rain—
soft, light rain rains.
Living water reigns.

Water
whether wanted
in storm

or warmed
still we are
watered

drenched
sometimes drowse
as roots

earthbound
feed, so we
night-long long

to rise,
to rain
to fall as

light rain—
soft, light rain rains.
Living water reigns.

Posted with permission of the poet.

Margo Swiss also contributed a poem to my blog The 55 Project, which consists of poems inspired by the 55th chapter of Isaiah.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Margo Swiss: second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

George Herbert*

George Herbert (1593—1633) had not published a book of poetry in his own lifetime, but his book The Temple did appear shortly after his death in 1633. He and John Donne are the most influential of what we today call the Metaphysical Poets —a group that also includes, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvel and Thomas Traherne.

It seems that Herbert's ambition had nothing to do with fame, but with looking deeply into his own soul and seeking to be honest before God. Even so, his fame outstrips that of many who were seekers of a reputation. His influence is felt, not only in the poetry of the seventeenth century, but also in such writers as Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden.

Herbert's poetry is suitable for spiritual meditation—helpful as we seek to reflect on God's faithfulness, and on our own fickleness.

Love III

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
-----------Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
-----------From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
-----------If I lacked anything.

“A guest," I answered, “worthy to be here”:
-----------Love said, “You shall be he.”
“I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
-----------I cannot look on thee.”
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
-----------“Who made the eyes but I?”

“Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
-----------Go where it doth deserve.”
“And know you not," says Love, “who bore the blame?”
-----------“My dear, then I will serve.”
“You must sit down," says Love, “and taste my meat.”
-----------So I did sit and eat.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about George Herbert: first post, third post, fourth post. You can also find a George Herbert poem that grew out of Isaiah 55 at: The 55 Project.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Doug Beardsley

Doug Beardsley has published seven books of poetry, and three books about hockey—Canada's national game. He is also known as an authority on the Holocaust. His new and selected poems, Wrestling with Angels, appeared from Montreal's Signal Editions in 1995. He is married to literary critic and poet, Rosemary Sullivan. Doug Beardsley taught at the University of Victoria from 1981 to 2006.

He collaborated with celebrated Canadian poet Al Purdy on two books. The Man Who Outlived Himself, about John Donne, and No One Else is Lawrence, honouring the poetry of D.H. Lawrence. The Canadian Encyclopedia also notes Beardsley is "a friend and longtime correspondent of Irving Layton," another of Canada's best known poets.

The following poem is from Doug Beardsley's book Kissing the Body of My Lord: the Marie Poems (1982), which is a series of poems written from the point of view of Marie of the Incarnation—the leader of a group of nuns who came to New France (Quebec) to establish the Ursuline Order in 1639.

Gospel Prayer

Often I have seen the many sides of myself down falling
through my fault, my most grievous fault
my feeble faith. Why You came to me I cannot know.

My life wells up. What we do in this world,
how we pass through cannot be called sin.
We live by what we love.

What does it mean to be saved,
what is salvation but knowing all
that You are. No one can see Your face

and not die. In Your sight I searched to find
nothing. I have made a cross here at the centre
of myself and come up empty

From You I draw my final breath
the way the sisters draw water from our frozen well.
Wet me with Your grace, take me with Your love,

will me to be what you want
me to know, my whole life a prayer
of preparation.

All heaven is here, all the saints of the past
collect about me in the cold of this church we chose
to call Kébec. As it was

once more, grant me the Word my brother born,
I am coming home to share with You
life's encircled sorrow, this anguished end.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Mary Sidney Herbert

Mary Sidney Herbert (1561—1621) the Countess of Pembroke, is one of the first English women to be acknowledged as a significant writer. She was influential in many aspects of the society of her day. She established “The Wilton Circle” — a literary group which included Edmund Spenser and her brother, Sir Philip Sidney. She was also accomplished as a poet and theologian.

Her brother had been working on a verse translation of the Psalms at the time of his death (1586) — having completed the first 43 Psalms. Mary continued the project, translating Psalms 44 to 150. Her Psalm translations became very influential on the subsequent generation of British poets — particularly on John Donne and George Herbert.

In 1601, King James I visited her at Wilton, where he was entertained by Shakespeare’s company The King’s Men. Shakespeare’s first folio (1623) was dedicated to two of her sons.

Psalm 52

Tyrant, why swell'st thou thus,
------Of mischief vaunting?
Since help from God to us
------Is never wanting.

Lewd lies thy tongue contrives,
------Loud lies it soundeth;
Sharper than sharpest knives
------With lies it woundeth.

Falsehood thy wit approves,
------All truth rejected:
Thy will all vices loves,
------Virtue neglected.

Not words from cursed thee,
------But gulfs are poured;
Gulfs wherein daily be
------Good men devoured.

Think'st thou to bear it so?
------God shall displace thee;
God shall thee overthrow,
------Crush thee, deface thee.

The just shall fearing see
------These fearful chances,
And laughing shoot at thee
------With scornful glances.

Lo, lo, the wretched wight,
------Who God disdaining,
His mischief made his might,
------His guard his gaining.

I as an olive tree
------Still green shall flourish:
God's house the soil shall be
------My roots to nourish.

My trust in his true love
------Truly attending,
Shall never thence remove,
------Never see ending.

Thee will I honour still,
------Lord, for this justice;
There fix my hopes I will
------Where thy saints' trust is.

Thy saints trust in thy name,
------Therein they joy them:
Protected by the same,
------Naught can annoy them.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

John Donne*

John Donne (1572―1631) has now been established as one of the English language’s greatest poets; this was not always the case. In his own day, he was better known as a preacher — serving as dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral. During his lifetime his verse circulated in manuscript form among those who valued it. Immediately after his death it was published in several editions, but soon fell out of fashion to be all but forgotten for centuries. During these years some poets, such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Browning, were solitary voices in praise of John Donne. It wasn’t until the 1920s that admirers including William Butler Yeats and T.S. Eliot succeeded in drawing the attention of the literary world to Donne's poetry.

The following poem is the third from “La Corona” from Donne’s Holy Sonnets.

Nativity

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb,
Now leaves his well-beloved imprisonment,
There he hath made himself to his intent
Weak enough, now into our world to come;
But Oh, for thee, for him, hath th'Inn no room?
Yet lay him in this stall, and from the orient,
Stars, and wisemen will travel to prevent
Th'effect of Herod's jealous general doom;
See’st thou, my soul, with thy faith's eyes, how he
Which fills all place, yet none holds him, doth lie?
Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss him, and with him into Egypt go,
With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

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

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

Thomas Traherne

Thomas Traherne (1637—1674) is considered by some to be the last of the English metaphysical poets, connecting him with such figures as John Donne and George Herbert. Although he was somewhat agnostic at age 15 when he went to Oxford's Brasenose College, he had a mystical experience there which led him to become an Anglican priest.

He only published one prose book before his death, Roman Forgeries (1673). Two further books appeared before the seventeenth century was through, but his poetry largely remained unknown.

In 1896 two of his poetry manuscripts were discovered in a London bookstall; at first they were thought to be the work of Henry Vaughan, but were soon identified as the work of Traherne, and published in 1903 as Poetical Works. In 1910 another was discovered in the British Museum and published as Poems of Felicity. Further discoveries of his writing, some as recently as 1997, have continued to increase interest in Traherne as a theologian and a poet. To this day, much of his work only appears in manuscript form.

His Power Bounded, Greater Is His Might

His Power bounded, greater is in might,
Than if let loose, 'twere wholly infinite.
He could have made an endless sea by this,
But then it had not been a sea of bliss.
Did waters from the centre to the skies
Ascend, 'twould drown whatever else we prize.
The ocean bounded in a finite shore,
Is better far because it is no more.
No use nor glory would in that be seen,
His power made it endless in esteem.
Had not the Sun been bounded in its sphere,
Did all the world in one fair flame appear,
And were that flame a real Infinite
'Twould yield no profit, splendor, nor delight.
Its corps confined, and beams extended be
Effects of Wisdom in the Deity.
One star made infinite would all exclude,
An earth made infinite could ne'er be viewed:
But one being fashioned for the other's sake,
He, bounding all, did all most useful make
And which is best, in profit and delight
Tho' not in bulk, they all are infinite.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Thomas Traherene: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca