Alfred Tennyson*

Alfred Tennyson (1809—1892) is well-celebrated as one of England’s greatest poets, although the poetics of the nineteenth century fell out of fashion in the twentieth. He served as Poet Laureate of Great Britain and Ireland from 1850 until his death.

The following poem is from In Memoriam, A.H.H. (1850). Tennyson wrote the elegy as a tribute to his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam. It has been said that the image for this poem comes from when Tennyson was staying near Waltham Abbey and heard the church bells clanging in the wind on a stormy night.

Although it is technically addressed to the bells, the poem is like a New Year’s prayer, and acknowledges the one we need to turn to. I find the request in stanza four particularly fitting for our troubled times as we enter 2021.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Alfred Tennyson: 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.

Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes (1880―1958) is an English poet who grew up in Wales. He was educated at Oxford, but missed getting his degree because, during his finals, he was meeting with his publisher to arrange for his first poetry collection, The Loom of Years (1902). During WWI he wrote poems and stories to boost morale; he was made a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 1918.

In his 1934 book of apologetics The Unknown God, Alfred Noyes outlines the intellectual steps which led him from agnosticism to Christian faith. He became a Catholic in 1927.

In a 1995 BBC poll, his much-anthologized poem “The Highwayman” was voted Britain’s 15th most popular poem.

A Belgian Christmas Eve

Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea,
Whose footsteps are not known,
To-night a world that turned from Thee
Is waiting—at Thy Throne.

The towering Babels that we raised
Where scoffing sophists brawl,
The little Antichrists we praised—
The night is on them all.

The fool hath said ... The fool hath said ...
And we, who deemed him wise,
We who believed that Thou wast dead,
How should we seek Thine eyes?

How should we seek to Thee for power
Who scorned Thee yesterday?
How should we kneel, in this dread hour?
Lord, teach us how to pray!

Grant us the single heart, once more,
That mocks no sacred thing,
The Sword of Truth our fathers wore
When Thou wast Lord and King.

Let darkness unto darkness tell
Our deep unspoken prayer,
For, while our souls in darkness dwell,
We know that Thou art there.

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.

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.

David Brendan Hopes

David Brendan Hopes is a poet and playwright who lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he has been a professor of English at UNCA since 1983. His Memoir A Childhood in the Milky Way: Becoming a Poet in Ohio (1999, Akron University Press) was nominated for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His plays have been widely staged in various cities, including New York. One recent play Night Music won the 2016 North Carolina Playwrights Prize. He has also authored fiction, and two collections of nature essays from Milkweed Editions.

I included the following poem in the anthology Adam, Eve, & the Riders of the Apocalypse; it is also in David Brendan Hopes’ fourth poetry collection Peniel (2017, Saint Julian Press).

On the Adoration of the Shepherds

God is born tonight in the next town.
Be serious. Who wouldn’t go?
Lock the back door. Turn the furnace down.
Throw a handful of food at the dog. Blow
off the dinner with the couple you really like.
Riffle through the bills for those
which absolutely will not wait. Take a hike.
The way? The consequence? The point? Who knows?
Select a path, an avenue, goat trail, a turnpike,
on through the twilight and the early snows.
Angel voices are, of course, a plus,
but go in dark and silence if you must.
Remember to seek the narrowest wretched door.
Prepare to diminish, resign, dispense, adore.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Anne Porter*

Anne Porter (1911—2011) had written poetry all her life, although through the busy years of raising a family she had not sought publication. It wasn’t until after the death of her husband ― the painter Fairfield Porter ― in 1975 that she began to consider poetry to be her new vocation.

Connections with significant American artists, and their encouragement, led to the publication of her 1994 collection, An Altogether Different Language, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Porter added 39 new poems to these, for her second book, Living Things: Collected Poems (2006, Zoland Books).

In a 2010 article in the Christian Century, Ellen F. Davis wrote that Porter is a “direct descendant of the psalmists”; she “clarif[ies] what is at stake in the Psalter: nothing less than the possibility of praising God truly.”

Anne Porter passed away just one month before her 100th birthday.

Noël

When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down
And brought into our houses

When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows

We hear and sing
The customary carols

They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common

But there are carols
That carry phrases
Of the haunting music
Of the other world
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message

Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices

They look at us
With their clear eyes
And ask the piercing questions
God alone can answer.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Anne Porter: first post, second 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.

Sarah Klassen*

Sarah Klassen is a major Canadian poet whose poems rise reflectively and naturally from her life and fascinations. Her eighth poetry collection The Tree of Life (2020, Turnstone) continues the trajectory of her excellent 2012 collection Monstrance. Carla Funk has said, “Tuned to time―ancient, apocalyptic, and current, these poems sing of pilgrimage…”

Here you’ll find several poems that find Sarah Klassen in her native habitat ― the banks of the Red River in Winnipeg. “Once you’ve lived beside a river,” she says, “you’ll always want to rest your burning eyes / on water.” And so, we’re invited to do so with her as her experiences regularly resurface.
----------“Before sundown on a spring evening,
----------I leaned over the balcony railing. Below me
----------The river slithered north, a grey-green, turgid serpent.”
She’s on the lookout for, “six half-grown foxes…yelping, chasing, / wrestling on the grass like children unrestrained…” (“In Passing”).

Similarly, in “Ritual” she begins, “Holy week and three buffleheads on the cold river / practice the right of baptism.” A few days ago, she mentioned to me by e-mail, “These past few days I've been entertained by a family of playful otters on the river,” so I’m hopeful that they too will make it into a poem sometime soon.

Often, too, the stories and language of scripture appear ― Elijah, Hagar, Esther, Mary, and seven poems for the seven churches of Revelation 2 and 3. Two sections of her reflection on the church in Ephesus, appears at Poems For Ephesians.

Refuge

What song do we sing when the journey ends
and we find ourselves in another country
with our exhausted children, our pitiful possessions,
a wardrobe all wrong for the climate,
a language no one understands? Our names
are known to no one, our gestures inappropriate

in this culture. We are naked. Nervous.
The overwhelming welcome breaks our hearts.
Each smile a shocking surprise.
A minivan opens its obedient doors and we ride
like royalty to light-filled rooms, furnished for us.
We are told: This is your home.

If we knew the language
and had breath to speak it,
we would ask: Where is that river
at whose banks we may fall to our knees
and weep?

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Sarah Klassen: first post, second 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.

Lucille Clifton*

Lucile Clifton (1936—2010) is an American poet who grew up in Buffalo, New York. Her poetry is often concerned with family, community, racial identify, and hope. Frequently she includes biblical allusions, and speaks of deep spiritual beliefs. She is also known as an award-winning children’s author.

Clifton was a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2012, The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton: 1965–2010 (BOA Editions) brought together her previously published poems plus several that had not previously appeared.

God send easter

and we will lace the
jungle on
and step out
brilliant as birds
against the concrete country
feathers waving as we
dance toward jesus
sun reflecting mango
and apple as we
glory in our skin

the calling of the disciples

some Jesus
has come on me
i throw down my nets
into the water he walks
i loose the fish
he feeds to cities
and everyone calls me
an old name
as i follow out
laughing like God’s fool
behind this Jesus

won’t you celebrate with me

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Lucille Clifton: 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.