William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles (1762—1850) is an English priest, poet and critic. He’d won a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford, and demonstrated his proficiency by winning the 1783 Chancellor’s prize for Latin verse. He followed his family line by becoming an Anglican Priest, like his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father before him.

In 1789 he published a small book called Fourteen Sonnets, which was a break from much of the poetry currently being written by such poets as Alexander Pope. These poems were highly praised by the younger poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who credited Bowles as helping to re-establish the sonnet as a contemporary form. It was his criticism of such poets as Pope — upholding the Natural as opposed to the Artificial — that particularly inspired Coleridge and Wordsworth. Bowles later summarized these views in his controversial 1819 publication, The Invariable Principles of Poetry.

He also published several volumes of longer poems, including, The Spirit of Discovery (1804), The Missionary (1813); The Grave of the Last Saxon (1822); and St John in Patmos (1833). Bowles is today best remembered for his sonnets, his shorter poems, and for his work as a critic.

The Withered Leaf

Oh! mark the withered leaves that fall
In silence to the ground;
Upon the human heart they call,
And preach without a sound.
They say, So passes man’s brief year!
To-day, his green leaves wave;
To-morrow, changed by time and sere,
He drops into the grave.
Let Wisdom be our sole concern,
Since life’s green days are brief!
And faith and heavenly hope shall learn
A lesson from the leaf.

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.

Kristijonas Donelaitis

Kristijonas Donelaitis (1714—1780) is a Lithuanian Evangelical Lutheran pastor and poet. At age 29 he was appointed the pastor of a small parish in East Prussia where he cared for the peasants of the area. Half of his congregation were Germans, who were supported by the government to push the Lithuanians out of the most fertile farmland. Donelaitis, as pastor, was frequently involved in settling disputes. He remained there in Tolminkiemis for the rest of his life.

The following is from his extensive work, Metai — sometimes translated as The Year, and sometimes as The Seasons — which is 2,997 lines in length, and depicts the cycle of life for Lithuanian serfs in East Prussia. Donelaitis did not publish this work in his own lifetime. It is considered the first classic Lithuanian language poem. Its’ first publication was in a shortened version called Metai in 1818, in both Lithuanian and a translation into German.

Donelaitis, in this part of the longer work describes the fading of summer from the viewpoint of his peasant agricultural workers and the world around them:
------There, where the black hawk fed his young on chicken meat,
------And where the raven brought a gosling to his nest,
------Lo, there, all summer joy and merriment is gone!

He then goes into great detail about a Lithuanian wedding feast, about the behaviours — good and bad — by various people, and finally sermonizes about how the peasants (the boors) should behave.

from Autumn Wealth

Of course, there is no lack of faithful Christians, too.
Most of Lithuanians are men of good character;
They love their families, obey the will of God.
Each day live saintly lives, steer clear of all misdeeds,
And rule their modest homes with kind parental care.

Take men like Selmas, he is worthy of good praise.
A boor nay, not a lord — but a fair-minded boor.
His house is simple, just like any other boor's;
His food each day is plain, of meager seasoning;
He only drinks root beer or water from a brook;
He wears but homespun, three heald woven, linen garb,
Or, in the winter time, a worn-out sheepskin coat.
It's not through penury he lives so modestly,
But to pay up the taxes to the government,
And then to render to the school and church what's due.
Of course, you know full well the hardships of these times,
How we are forced to live on beet soup and dry crusts.
Therefore is it not good that Selmas, a plain boor,
Discreetly manages to save a little bit?
Besides, one does not have to tell how much he saves,
Nor to disclose the place where he his savings keeps.

In case you plan to visit Selmas' modest home,
Well, you will find it clean, and restful as a church.
His table's like the holy altar, neatly set,
And on it rest many selected sacred books,
So that, when all the daily doings have been done,
Himself, or even his enlightened family,
May read the Word of God, or sing the holy hymns,
And ease the miseries of this oppressive life.

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.

Michellan Sarile-Alagao

Michellan Sarile-Alagao is a Filipino writer and poet. She has published a verse-novella (Black, 2020), two poetry chapbooks, her full-length collection After the Sunstone, a short-story collection, and six children’s books.

She came to faith in Christ as a university student. She describes the experience, saying, “When I read the first chapter of John, my stone heart stirred. I had lived in darkness, where words were my only light.” She was drawn to the Word — the one who can love her back.

Until recently she was an acquisitions and book editor at OMF Literature in the Philippines, and remains one of their authors. She contributed to the book Joyful Light: Modern Christian Poetry by Filipino Women (2019).

The following poem is from her book After the Sunstone (2016).

Psalm

I would like you to sing over me
a song of deliverance.
I am tired of singing to you,
offering praises that don't get past the ceiling.
If this is presumptuous,
then I know I am forgiven already.
I am a little girl—dancing, demanding:
Look at me. Look at me.
I am a child ready to play hide and seek,
ready to be found.
Oh Lord, remind us that we were loved into being.
Shout it, if you must.
Let that fact be the music I dance to,
and the song that finds me.

Posted with permission of the poet.

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.

Wendell Berry*

Wendell Berry is an essayist, novelist and poet who lives on a farm in Henry County, Kentucky. He is known for his environmentalism, and his agrarian values. His most recent poetry collection, Another Day: Sabbath Poems 2013-2023 is a follow-up to his book This Day in which he had gathered all of his Sabbath Poems to date from 1979 to 2012. Berry’s Sabbaths, according to Southern Review of Books, are “poems mostly written on Sunday walks in the woods as a spiritual or reflective exercise.”

He celebrated his 91st birthday on August 5th, and has been married to his wife Tanya since 1957. He expresses his belief in Sabbath rest, saying, “the providence or the productivity of the living world, the most essential work, continues while we rest.” This reminds me of Christ’s parable in Mark 4:17 where “whether [the farmer] sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how.”

Counterpoint Press suggests “With the publication of this new edition, it has become increasingly clear that the Sabbath Poems have become the very heart of Berry’s work.” I included five of Berry’s earlier Sabbath poems in the anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry, and see them as significant to the poetry of our times.

The following poem I suspect may have arisen from Berry’s meditations on Piero della Francesca's painting, "The Resurrection". It is from Another Day (Counterpoint, 2024).

Sabbaths 2020 VIII

Piero

A brushstroke,
another, another,
a day and a day,
and finally Christ
stands, risen
out of his grave,
as this witness
at last has seen.

*This is the fourth Kingdom Poets post about Wendell Berry: 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.

Henry Alline

Henry Alline (1748—1784) (pronounced Allen) is an evangelist and hymn-writer known as the Apostle of Nova Scotia. Born in Rhode Island, he moved with his family to Falmouth, Nova Scotia in 1760 (which is where the pictured memorial is situated). The family were New England Planters who came to obtain farmland offered by the British government to English-speaking Protestants after the expulsion of the Acadians.

Alline experienced a remarkable conversion in March 1775, after which he dedicated himself to preaching the gospel. Educational opportunities were non-existent for Planters, and so he was self-educated through his own reading. In the 1770s he was influential in starting a Great Awakening religious revival. His New Lights ideas and followers quickly spread across the region and into northeastern New England.

The following poem appeared in Hymns, and Spiritual Songs (Peter Edes, 1786) which was published in Boston. His autobiography, The Life and Journal of the Rev. Mr. Henry Alline, appeared in 1806.

On Death

I
Death reign'd with vigour since the Fall,
------And rides with fury still;
Nor rich nor poor, nor great nor small,
------Can e'er resist his will.
II
He ravages both night and day,
------Through all our mortal stage;
And ev'ry creature falls a prey
------To his resistless rage.
III
Nations and empires he has slain,
------And laid whole cities waste,
And doth his cruel siege maintain
------To sweep the world in haste.
IV
Ride forth, O mighty Prince of Peace,
------And take away his sting.
Then shall his cruel kingdom cease,
------And saints his triumph sing.

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.

Kevin Hart*

Kevin Hart is an Australian theologian, philosopher, and poet. He has taught at numerous schools, including Notre Dame University, University of Virginia, and is currently the Jo Rae Wright University Distinguished Professor at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of numerous scholarly books, including Poetry and Revelation: For a Phenomenology of Religious Poetry (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), as well as many poetry collections.

His new book, Carnets (Poiema/Cascade, 2025), is quite different than his other poetry books — probably quite different than any poetry book you’ve ever encountered. It consists of 500 single-line poems, or aphorisms. Here are a few of those which recently appeared in Ekstasis:

------If the words rise up to meet you, it’s poetry.

------Everything good was created by God; the rest, by committee.

------The truth is whole but mostly found in scraps.

------When you contemplate, time flows around you not through you.

I am honoured to have worked with Kevin Hart as editor for Carnets.

The following poem first appeared in the Tasmanian journal Forty South. The first half of the title is taken from some very old Chinese poems, and yet reminds me of similar epigraphs leading into several of the Psalms. Lake St. Clair, here, has nothing to do with the Ontario/Michigan border, but to the mountain lake in Tasmania.

To the Tune of “Early in the Morning”

Dissolving hills
Cradling Lake St. Clair:

The milky light of winter
In the early hours,

A forest old as rain
And a cold sky running south

As far as mind can see
With glaciers calving there.

God made the world
With just a breath:

Three days now
Of hiking through it.

Posted with permission of the poet.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Kevin Hart: first 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.

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.