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.

Gerard Smyth

Gerard Smyth is a Dublin poet who has authored ten poetry collections, the most recent of which is The Sundays of Eternity (2020, Dedalus Press). His earliest poetry appeared in the late ‘60s, including his first book The Flags Are Quiet (1969, New Writers’ Press). He spent his entire professional life as a journalist with The Irish Times, where he still serves as Poetry Editor.

Three of his poems are included in the landmark issue of Poetry Ireland Review (#112 ― Name and Nature: ‘Who do you say that I am?’) edited by John F. Deane, which includes poetry by Seamus Heaney, Pádraig J. Daly, and Rowan Williams.

The first of the following poems was inspired by the large-scale painting “Blue Crucifixion” by Hughie O’Donoghue. The second one, written at the beginning of our current pandemic, has been set to music by British composer Philip Lawton for the choir of Berlin's Passionskirche (Church of the Passion).

Blue Crucifixion

for Clare and Hughie O’Donoghue

Not the crudely sketched
man of sorrows
from the cover-image
of the old school catechism
that was touched
and smudged so much
it lost its mystic fragrance.

And not Gauguin’s Yellow Christ
in the Breton countryside,
a Golgotha made strange
by those maids in attendance.
Or Poussin’s Redeemer
down from the Cross
under the gaze of the spellbound.

But the Blue Crucifixion
shows a fleshy semblance
of human wreckage that belongs
to a man who was counted
among the transgressors.
Our idea of him electrified
by such mystery as art requires.

Isolation

Bunched together like a gathering tribe
the daffodils rise again and there are signs
of sun behind the clouds.
We still have bread and books
and songs to keep the radio alive.
A note through the door is a kind surprise
and birds on the branches
of the trees outside stay up late.
The mornings are not so dark,
the internet takes us to the works of art,
tunes us in to Debussy or Paul Simon,
brings us close to the faraway country
where loved ones are.
A kite above someone’s back garden
rises and dips and gives a moment of joy
to a face in the window of isolation.

March 17th-19th, 2020

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.

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.

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.

Catherine Chandler

Catherine Chandler is a Canadian poet who was born in New York City, raised in Pennsylvania, and then emigrated to Canada in 1971. Until her retirement, she was a lecturer in Spanish in McGill University’s Department of Languages and Translation, in Montreal. She and her husband divide their time between Quebec and Uruguay.

She is the author of three chapbooks, and four full-length poetry collections ― most recent of which is Pointing Home (2019, Kelsay Books). She won the Richard Wilbur Award for her book The Fragile Hour. Along with her own poems, Pointing Home also includes ten poems Chandler translated from Uruguayan women poets.

Catherine Chandler’s poetry is characterized by forms ― such as the sonnet, pantoum, villanelle, and cento. Three of her poems have been included in the National Poetry Registry in the Library of Parliament in Ottawa.

The following poem first appeared in The Agonist, and is from Pointing Home.

Matthew 7:1-5

The fix. The stealth. The stoop. The swoop. The kill—
a barb more brutal than a falcon’s bill.

Words meant to wound. What are you on, some kind
of guilt trip? (So much for the ties that bind).

Yet I, the speck-eyed sister, turned away,
keeping my counsel till another day,

trusting my mother hadn’t heard, although
her sense of hearing was the last to go.

-------------------------—Hospice of the VNA, Heritage House, July 2011

Posted with permission of the poet.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

Catherine of Siena

Catherine of Siena (1347―1380) has been honoured by the Catholic Church throughout the centuries. She was canonized in 1461, declared a doctor of the church in 1970, and a patron saint of Europe in 1999.

Born Caterina Benincasa, the 23rd of 25 children, she claimed to have seen a vision of Jesus, when she was just seven and told her parents she would dedicate herself to a religious life. At fifteen she cut off her hair to scuttle their plan to have her married. She was a mystic, and an ascetic who served the poor and sick.

In 1374, when most residents fled the Black Death, she and her followers remained in Siena to nurse the sick and bury the dead. Once the pandemic waned, because she was distressed by corruption in the church, Catherine visited Pope Gregory XI in Avignon, France. She believed this exile was part of the problem, and in 1377 he followed her advice and returned to Rome.

In The Dialogue ― her collected letters ― she wrote that God told her "not to love me for your own sake, or your neighbour for your own sake, but to love me for myself, yourself for myself, your neighbour for myself."

Consecrated

All has been consecrated.
The creatures in the forest know this,
The earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart full of love.

Strange a priest would rob us of this knowledge
and then empower himself with the ability
to make holy
what already was.

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.

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens (1879―1955) perhaps has no business being mentioned in a blog about Christian poetry. He grew up in a home from which the children were sent to schools connected with local Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, and in which his mother read a chapter every evening to them from the Bible. When he attended Harvard as a young man, he became an outspoken skeptic.

He was prone to depression, and became an insurance executive in Hartford, Connecticut ― busying himself with a drudgery that gave him stability, but interfered with his literary output. Stevens’ first book Harmonium (1923) contains most of his frequently-anthologized poems. His second book Ideas of Order appeared thirteen years later.

Biographer Paul Mariani sees evidence of a religious turn occurring in Stevens’ latter poems, which suggest the poet was becoming skeptical of his own skepticism.

In a review of the Mariani’s biography The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens (Simon & Schuster) in The New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl writes of Stevens:
----------“Before he died, in 1955, he accepted Catholic baptism
----------from a hospital chaplain, who said that Stevens hadn’t
----------needed 'an awful lot of urging on my part except to be
----------nice to him.' The conversion was more poetic than devotional
----------in spirit, Mariani speculates, but, perhaps, 'being a surety
----------lawyer—he opted to sign on the dotted line at the end.'”

The following poem is from 1954.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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 Betjeman*

John Betjeman (1906—1984) is one of Britain’s most popular twentieth century poets. He differed from most of his peers in that he was neither a modernist (like his school teacher T.S. Eliot) nor an academic (like his Oxford tutor C.S. Lewis). He had a love for Victorian architecture, as existed in railway stations and churches ― even writing books on the subject, the first of which was Ghastly Good Taste (1933). There is a nostalgia expressed in his verse, which appealed to the common people in Britain’s post-war years.

He became a High-Church Anglican while still in school ― a conversion which significantly influenced the rest of his life.

In his poetry he often mocked ideals of progress, and attitudes of the privileged, and church-goers who didn’t see their own hypocrisy. He honestly expressed his own doubts and his fear of death, which can be seen in the following poem.

Before the Anaesthetic

Intolerably sad, profound
St. Giles's bells are ringing round,
They bring the slanting summer rain
To tap the chestnut boughs again
Whose shadowy cave of rainy leaves
The gusty belfry-song receives.
Intolerably sad and true,
Victorian red and jewel blue,
The mellow bells are ringing round
And charge the evening light with sound,
And I look motionless from bed
On heavy trees and purple red
And hear the midland bricks and tiles
Throw back the bells of stone St. Giles,
Bells, ancient now as castle walls,
Now hard and new as pitchpine stalls,
Now full with help from ages past,
Now dull with death and hell at last.
Swing up! and give me hope of life,
Swing down! and plunge the surgeon's knife.
I, breathing for a moment, see
Death wing himself away from me
And think, as on this bed I lie,
Is it extinction when I die?
I move my limbs and use my sight;
Not yet, thank God, not yet the Night.
Oh better far those echoing hells
Half-threaten'd in the pealing bells
Than that this "I" should cease to be
Come quickly, Lord, come quick to me.
St. Giles's bells are asking now
"And hast thou known the Lord, hast thou?"
St. Giles's bells, they richly ring
"And was that Lord our Christ the King?"
St. Giles's bells they hear me call
I never knew the lord at all
Oh not in me your Saviour dwells
You ancient, rich St. Giles's bells.
Illuminated missals ― spires ―
Wide screens and decorated quires ―
All these I loved, and on my knees
I thanked myself for knowing these
And watched the morning sunlight pass
Through richly stained Victorian glass
And in the colour-shafted air
I, kneeling, thought the Lord was there.
Now, lying in the gathering mist
I know that Lord did not exist;
Now, lest this "I" should cease to be,
Come, real Lord, come quick to me.
With every gust the chestnut sighs,
With every breath, a mortal dies;
The man who smiled alone, alone,
And went his journey on his own
With "Will you give my wife this letter,
In case, of course, I don't get better?"
Waits for his coffin lid to close
On waxen head and yellow toes.
Almighty Saviour, had I Faith
There'd be no fight with kindly Death.
Intolerably long and deep
St. Giles's bells swing on in sleep:
"But still you go from here alone"
Say all the bells about the Throne.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about John Betjeman: 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.

Tony Conran

Tony Conran (1931―2013) is a Welsh poet and translator. He was born in India, but due to the difficulties of cerebral palsy he was raised by his grandparents on the north coast of Wales. His reputation has predominantly come from his translations of Welsh poetry into English ― particularly at first for Welsh Verse (1967, Penguin). Until 1983 he taught in the English department at Bangor University. He was also a convert to Roman Catholicism. 

He published many books of his own poetry as well, including Spirit Level (1974), Visions & Praying Mantids (1997), and The Red Sap of Love (2006). 

Beyond This Divide 

Songs of the Cherubim 

Call us, green islands 

Beckon us, but once heart 

Hears, it’s as if 

We’ve been orphaned, lost 

To that grey rock and 

Lucid wave, shadowy with 

Saffron fish, 

Where great turtles clamber 

Down beaches and are 

Sure of tomorrow.

This post was suggested by my friend Burl Horniachek.

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.

William Langland

William Langland is the author of the alliterative poem The Vision of Piers Plowman, which was written in Middle English. There are three extant versions of the poem from the 1360s to the 1380s. The poem, which was an influence on Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, consists of eight dreams in which the narrator is on a quest for the true Christian life.

The following, from a translation by Peter Sutton, takes Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan to speak of the inadequacies of Faith and Hope for our salvation unless we rely on the blood of Christ. Faith and Hope ― personified in the roles of the two who passed by the injured man ― are also identified as Abraham and Moses.

from The Vision of Piers Plowman (Step XVII ― Lines 47 ff.)

As we went on our way, exchanging words,
We saw a Samaritan sitting on a mule,
And jogging speedily the same way as ourselves,
Coming from Jericho, as that country is called,
And trotting to a tournament in Jerusalem town.
The herald and Hope and he came together
Where a traveller lay wounded, attacked by thieves.
He was stripped and unable to help himself,
Or to stand and proceed, and no aid was at hand.
His limbs would not move and he looked half-alive.
The herald called Abraham, or Faith, saw him first
But refused to go nearer than nine plowed furrows.
Then along came Hope, who had loudly alleged
That he’d helped many men with the message of Moses,
But he steered well clear when he saw the scene,
Like a duck that is dodging a deadly falcon.
Then soon the Samaritan caught sight of the man
And leapt from his mount and led on the mule
As he went to view the victim’s wounds.
He deduced from the pulse that death was a danger,
And could tell at once that treatment was wanted.
So he hastened to his bottles and opened both
And washed the wounds with wine and oil,
Bandaged him, bound up his head and brought him
On the mule several miles to some houses near a market,
A cluster that was new and was called the Law of Christ,
Where he lodged him at an inn and alerted the landlord,
Asking him to treat him until his return.
“Here is money,” he said, “for medicine for the man,
And a few more coins for the cost of his keep.
And should he cost more I will settle it soon,
But I really cannot stay,” he said, and swiftly
He set off to ride the Jerusalem road.
Faith followed hastily, hoping to overhaul him,
And Hope hurried after, as fast as he was able,
Intending to catch him and talk as they travelled.
Seeing that, I scurried on too without stopping,
Pursuing the Samaritan who showed such pity
And pleading for employment as his page or groom.
“I fear not,” he said, “but you’ll find I’m your friend
In time of need.” So I thanked him and told him
How Faith and Hope had fled full of fear
When they saw the man and his sorrowful state.
“Excuse them,” he answered. “They would hardly have helped
For no medicine on earth could have mended the man,
Neither Faith nor Hope, for his hurts had so festered,
Without blood from a bairn that was born of a maid.
If baptized and bathed in that blessed blood,
And patched with penance and the Passion of that babe,
He’d be able to hobble, but he’ll never be whole
Till he’s swallowed the bairn’s sacred body and blood.
“No one wanders through the wilds of this world
Without running into robbers, riding or on foot,
Save a few such as Faith and his fellow, Hope,
And myself and now you, and such as pursue
Our ways and works, for the wood harbours outlaws
Who lurk on the look-out for likely prospects,
Checking who’s on horseback, ahead or behind,
Reckoning that riders are rougher prey.
When the robber saw me, a Samaritan on a mule,
Which is known as Flesh after fleshly human nature,
Following Faith and his fellow he fled
And he hid in hell, but within three days
I can vouch that the felon will be fettered with chains
And will trouble no travellers who take this road:
O death, I will be thy death.
“Then Faith shall perform a forester’s duties,
Guiding those folk who are foreign to the forest
And revealing the road to Jerusalem town.
And Hope shall be ostler at the inn, healing victims
And the feeble and faint whom Faith cannot teach,
Leading them with love, by the law of his writ,
Giving lodging and relief through belief in the Church,
Till I come once again to this country with comfort
And bring the salve that will save all the sick
Who crave it, covet it and cry to be cured.
Then the blood of the child in Bethlehem born
Shall save those who follow the faith of his friends.”
“Sweet sir,” I said, “should I accept
What Faith and his fellow have each affirmed?
Three separate persons, prime and perpetual,
Yet all one God, as Abraham argued,
While Hope then urged and exhorted me to love
One God above all and then everyone else
The same as myself with all my strength?”
“Fasten your faith and your firm belief
On Abraham,” he said, “the herald of arms.
And as Hope exhorted you, I urge you to love
Fellow Christians as kindly as you care for yourself.

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.

Jack Stewart

Jack Stewart is the author of a debut poetry collection ― No Reason ―which has just appeared as the latest book in the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. He and his family live in Coconut Creek, Florida, where he teaches literature and creative writing.

Having his home in Florida, and having his degrees from University of Alabama, and Emory (in Atlanta) may surprise you, in that Jack Stewart seems to love winter. In “The Shape of Cold” he sings his admiration, “…No snow is forecast, even though / It would be beautiful, slowly / Rippling the pond like what / Fish rise to, the subtlest // Light imaginable.
And in “The Elect” he paints for us:

-----All over this snow-laden town
-----Thousands of Popes have been elected,
-----The white smoke rising from what seem
-----To be every chimney…

No Reason does cover a lot of territory, though, including many ekphrastic depictions ranging from images of major artists such as El Greco, Michelangelo, and Turner down to a children’s book illustration of “the dark girl who pleased Pharaoh”.

I am pleased to have served as editor, for Jack, of this excellent new collection. His poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry, The Dark Horse Review, and Image.

Balancing the Flame

St. Stephanskirche, Vienna

Gothic grappling hook to heaven,
When it was rebuilt in the 14th century
The limestone must have shone brighter
Than the December snow.
Now soot-shadows climb the walls
And can’t be scrubbed away.
Inside, the light is also dim,
Even over the altar’s marble ember.
I drop a Euro in the cup.
In the musty oxygen,
The candle releases
A thread of smoke.
Most prayers begin in failure.
Like a match in an unsteady hand,
My amen always falters.
In what trembling air,
On what wick of words
Can I balance its flame?

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.

Afua Kuma

Afua Kuma (1900―1987) is an oral language poet of Ghana. Her parents were farmers of the Akan people. She grew up a Presbyterian, and worked as a farmer and midwife in her hometown of Obu-Kwahu, Ghana, where she was active within her church community. By the time she was seventy she was worshipping in a Pentecostal church, where ― although she was illiterate ― she was encouraged to participate in services by praying aloud.

Those in the congregation were astounded by the poetic skill and theological insight she used in corporate worship, which led to her being asked to participate in various events for Akan Christians.

One interesting aspect of her work is that she took the amoma poetic form ― traditionally used to praise chiefs by Akan male court poets ― and brought it into the church, bringing praise to Jesus as expressed by a female poet.

The following English translation is by Father Jon Kirby and published in the book, Jesus of the Deep Forest: Prayers and Praises of Afua Kuma (Asempa Publishers, 1981).

Chief Who Listens To The Poor

Chief who listens to the poor, humble King,
your words are precious jewels.
We don’t buy them, we don’t beg for them;
you give them to us freely!
Giver of good gifts, we are waiting for you,
And the sick are waiting for medicine.
O Jesus, you have swallowed death
and every kind of disease,
And have made us whole again.

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.

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova (1889—1966) is a Russian poet who suffered extensively under communism. In the ‘20s she was officially criticised for her poetry’s preoccupations with love and God. Her first husband was executed on trumped-up charges, she was present at the arrest of her friend Osip Mandelstam (who died in a concentration camp), her son was twice imprisoned (the second time serving five years in a gulag), and her work was often kept from the public. In 1946 she was denounced by the communist party for “eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference.”

Extensively, between 1935 and 1940, she worked in secret on her long poem Requiem which she finally completed in 1961. It appeared in book form in 1963, but wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1987. Requiem uses Biblical themes, such as Christ’s crucifixion, to reflect the situation in Russia ― particularly using images of Jesus’ mother and of Mary Magdalene to express the suffering of women under the Stalinist government.

In 1950 she wrote a few poems praising Stalin, in an attempt to gain her son’s freedom and to gain favour with the authorities. These poems were eliminated from all Russian editions of her work after the Soviet premier’s death.

She was short-listed for the Nobel Prize in 1965. At the time of her death she was recognized as the greatest woman in Russian literature.

I Taught Myself to Live Simply

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Anna Akhmatova: 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.

Coventry Patmore*

Coventry Patmore (1823—1896) is an English poet and essayist. From 1846 to 1865 he worked for the British Museum. He was best-known in his day for his four-volume Angel in the House which presents an idealized view of married life. Critics, however, suggest that The Unknown Eros, and Other Odes (1877), through never as popular, contains his best work.

Dana Gioia — in a recent interview for Catholic World Report — said, “The best religious poems give us a vividly authentic experience of the divine and the divine order of creation.” He went on to recommended three poems for readers to consider. The least known of these was Coventry Patmore’s “The Toys.” Gioia commends it as “a profound and troubling view of parenthood. As a widower, Patmore had to raise his children without a mother. He was a loving but imperfect father. This touching poem ends in one of the best depictions of God’s mercy in English literature.”

The Toys

My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes
And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,
Having my law the seventh time disobey'd,
I struck him, and dismiss'd
With hard words and unkiss'd,
His Mother, who was patient, being dead.
Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,
I visited his bed,
But found him slumbering deep,
With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet
From his late sobbing wet.
And I, with moan,
Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;
For, on a table drawn beside his head,
He had put, within his reach,
A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone,
A piece of glass abraded by the beach
And six or seven shells,
A bottle with bluebells
And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art,
To comfort his sad heart.
So when that night I pray'd
To God, I wept, and said:
Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,
Not vexing Thee in death,
And Thou rememberest of what toys
We made our joys,
How weakly understood
Thy great commanded good,
Then, fatherly not less
Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,
Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say,
"I will be sorry for their childishness."

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Coventry Patmore: 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.

Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan is a painter, poet and children’s author who lives on Little Cranberry Island in Maine. He was born in 1923 in Harlem, and raised in the Bronx. His first book did not appear until 1962 when he became the first African American to publish a children’s book as both the author and illustrator. 

He has long been a promoter of reading poetry aloud for children. His book Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry (1997) includes poems by such poets as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He has won the Coretta Scott King Award ten times ― sometimes for illustration, and sometimes both for writing and illustration. Perhaps his best known collection of his own poetry is 1992’s Sing To The Sun. He is also known for illustrated books of African folk tales, and of Black American Spirituals. 

 

The following poem is one of eleven poetic portraits of slaves, he wrote using original auction and plantation estate documents, that appear in his book, Freedom Over Me (2017). It was selected as a Newbery Honor Book. 

 

Qush 

Many years ago 

Mulvina and I worked together 

on a Louisiana plantation. 

Our voices could always be heard 

singing singing singing. 

It was our voices 

that brought us together. 

We sang to strengthen our spirits. 

We cared for each other. 

Luckily, we were sold together 

to the Fairchilds’ estate. 

We had a way with animals. 

We led their cattle 

to green pastures 

and still waters. 

No matter what the work―

herding the cattle, 

tending the garden, 

picking cotton― 

we sang. 

The steady gait of the cattle, 

their contented, quiet munching, 

aroused sentiments of song 

within us. 

We sang low, thoughtful melodies 

to Bible stories we heard 

standing in the back 

of the Big House 

for Sunday church services. 

We remembered 

the stories of suffering and longing, 

of Moses, Joshua, David 

of Jesus and Mary. 

Stories like our own. 

During the heavy laboring 

in the cotton fields, 

caring for the garden, 

planting rows of vegetables 

for the estate, 

the tiring daily chores, 

Mulvina and I sang together quietly: 

“Oh, by and by, 

by and by, 

I’m going to lay down 

this heavy load.”

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.

Maura Eichner*

Maura Eichner (1915—2009) is a Catholic nun, and the author of ten poetry collections including Hope Is A Blind Bard (1989) and After Silence: Selected Poems of Sister Maura Eichner S.S.N.D. (2011). She was Chair of the English Department at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland (now Notre Dame of Maryland University), teaching English there for 49 years. Through the years she maintained a correspondence with several significant writers, including, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Richard Wilbur. 

 

One tribute to her life concluded, “As a teacher and as a poet, Sister Maura was a believer. She believed in beauty ― in art, in nature, in music, in painting, in language. Sister Maura believed in life, and she believed in people. Above all, she believed simply and deeply in a God who believed in beauty, and in life, and in people. In one of her later notebooks, Sister Maura wrote 'One writes poetry in order to find God.' One may well read Sister Maura's poetry for the same reason."

 

Mother Theresa: Her Blessing 

May the God of peace be with you – 

calms the heart that hammers fear 

Her prayers for us. The hope she knew. 

She is our prophet of fidelity, true 

to the triune single voice: now, here. 

May the peace of God be with you. 

 She spoke rarely of the Thabor-glory view. 

Her creed was everyday: The Lord near. 

Vision for us. A love she knew. 

 

She lives in her letters: light breaks through 

the script: be one in heart. My dear ones, hear: 

May the God of peace be with you. 

 

Breaking bread to share, she, too, 

learned the miracle of loaves, her clear, 

testament to us. The faith she knew. 

Mother Theresa, serenely magnetized to 

the will of God, still speak your dear 

words: The God of peace be with you. 

Your prayer for us. The love you knew. 

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Maura Eichner: 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.

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564―1616) is perhaps the greatest dramatist of all time. He was a member of the popular theatrical company The King’s Men who performed in the Globe Theatre on the south bank of the Thames. What is known about him is primarily drawn from his poems and plays, with only scant details coming from official records ― such as his baptism as an infant at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon on April 26, 1564.

It is hard to know much about Shakespeare’s own religious views, since much of what he wrote is voiced by diverse characters. Some have claimed that he was secretly a Catholic, others that he was Protestant ― "He was an orthodox, confirming member of the Church into which he had been baptised, was brought up and married, in which his children were reared and in whose arms he at length was buried." (A.L. Rowse) ― and still others hold that his primary concerns were artistic, and that faith issues for him were secondary.

Regardless, William Shakespeare wrote many passages which express faith values. The following speech, written in blank verse, is from The Merchant of Venice (Act 4, Scene 1) and is spoken by Portia.

The Quality of Mercy

-----The quality of mercy is not strained;
-----It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
-----Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest,—
-----It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
-----‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
-----The thronèd monarch better than his crown:
-----His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
-----The attribute to awe and majesty,
-----Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
-----But mercy is above this sceptred sway,—
-----It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
-----It is an attribute to God himself;
-----And earthly power doth then show likest God’s,
-----When mercy seasons justice.

In the lines that follow , Portia goes on to say,
-----That in the course of justice none of us
-----Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy,
-----And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
-----The deeds of mercy.

This is the firat Kingdom Poets post about William Shakespeare: 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.

Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather (1663―1728) is a Boston Puritan minister, and prolific writer, who seems like he was caught between the conflicting perspectives of the times in which he lived. His influence was felt on scientific thought, and within American religious circles.

In his book Bonifacius, or Essays to Do Good (1710) he expressed progressive ideas such as having teachers reward, rather than punish, students to motivate them, and for physicians to consider a patient’s mental state as a possible cause of illness. There was violent opposition to his encouragement of the smallpox vaccine, particularly when he inoculated his own son.

On the other hand he was supportive of the old order rule of the clergy, in a day when pioneer hardships were diminishing. He is also mainly remembered for his views on witchcraft, which were influential during the Salem Witch Trials. Many American authors, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Harriet Beecher Stowe, acknowledged their debt to him.

Go Then My Dove

Go then, my Dove, but now no longer mine;
Leave Earth, and now in heavenly Glory shine.
Bright for thy Wisdome, Goodness, Beauty here;
Now brighter in a more angelick Sphere.
Jesus, with whom thy Soul did long to be,
Into His Ark, and Arms, has taken thee.
Dear Friends, with whom thou didst so dearly live,
Feel thy one Death to them a thousand give.
Thy Prayers are done; thy Alms are spent; thy Pains
Are ended now, in endless Joyes and Gains.
I faint, till thy last Words to Mind I call;
Rich Words! Heavn', Heav'n will make amends for all.

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.

Tomas Transtrὄmer*

Tomas Transtrὄmer (1931―2015) is a Swedish poet whose work plays on the edge of comprehension for his readers using elements of modernism, expressionism, and surrealism. His poems convey a sense of wonder and mystery at the movement of history and the beauty of the Scandinavian landscape ― through portrayals of musicians and artists, and images from nature.

His poetry has been translated into more than sixty languages. Some of those who have translated his work into English include, Robin Fulton, May Swenson, John F. Deane, and Robert Bly. In 2007 the Griffin Trust gave him their Lifetime Recognition Award, and in 2011 he received the Nobel Prize. He wrote 15 poetry collections over his career.

The following was translated by Robert Bly.

from Schubertiana (IV)

How much we have to take on trust every minute we live in
-----order not to drop through the earth!
Take on trust the snow masses clinging to rocksides over the
-----town.
Take on trust the unspoken promises, and the smile of
-----agreement, trust that the telegram does not concern us, and
that the sudden ax blow from inside is not coming.
Trust the axles we ride on down the thruway among the swarm
-----of steel bees magnified three hundred times.
But none of that stuff is really worth the trust we have.
The five string instruments say that we can take something else
-----on trust, and they walk with us a bit on the road.
As when the lightbulb goes out on the stair, and the hand
-----follows ― trusting it ― the blind banister rail that finds its
-----way in the dark.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about Tomas Transtrὄmer: 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.

Edwin Muir*

Edwin Muir (1887―1959) is one of Scotland’s premier twentieth century poets. Although he was born in Deerness, Orkney his father lost his farm in 1901. This forced the move to Glasgow, where Muir’s parents and brothers all died within a short period of time ― and the teenaged Edwin was forced into demeaning work in what he saw as an industrial hell. He always saw his childhood as being Eden-like, and the family’s move to Glasgow as a parallel to the Fall.

Muir became disillusioned, abandoning the Christianity of his childhood. At age 21 he embraced socialism as his new religion. His future-wife Willa was also agnostic, although she came from a far more privileged background. They were married in St Pancras’ Register Office in London. From there they moved to Europe, living in Prague, Germany, Italy, Salzburg, and Vienna. Edwin taught himself German, and he and Willa worked together translating literature into English.

During his time abroad, he encountered the brutality of Hitler’s Germany, and Mussolini’s Italy, which contrasted with the deep, soulful Christian roots behind European culture. It was in St Andrews in 1939 that Muir had an experience of faith in Christ that transformed his life.

The following poem “One Foot in Eden” is the title poem from Muir’s 1956 collection. The poem was also set to music by Nicholas Maw in 1990, which was commissioned by King’s College, Cambridge to mark the 500th anniversary of the founding of the college.

One Foot in Eden

One foot in Eden still, I stand
And look across the other land.
The world's great day is growing late,
Yet strange these fields that we have planted
So long with crops of love and hate.
Time's handiworks by time are haunted,
And nothing now can separate
The corn and tares compactly grown.
The armorial weed in stillness bound
About the stalk; these are our own.
Evil and good stand thick around
In the fields of charity and sin
Where we shall lead our harvest in.

Yet still from Eden springs the root
As clean as on the starting day.
Time takes the foliage and the fruit
And burns the archetypal leaf
To shapes of terror and of grief
Scattered along the winter way.
But famished field and blackened tree
Bear flowers in Eden never known.
Blossoms of grief and charity
Bloom in these darkened fields alone.
What had Eden ever to say
Of hope and faith and pity and love
Until was buried all its day
And memory found its treasure trove?
Strange blessings never in Paradise
Fall from these beclouded skies.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Edwin Muir: 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.

Theophan the Recluse

Theophan the Recluse (1815―1894) is an Orthodox Bishop of Tambov and Shatsk ― which are cities in modern day Ukraine and Russia. He is known for his books about the spiritual life, and for contributing to the translation into Russian of the Philokalia, which is a collection of writings from early church fathers.

He had been appointed rector of Kiev’s church schools, and then of the seminary in Novgorod. Later he served as chief priest of the embassy church in Constantinople. Eventually Theophan was recalled to Russia to become rector of the Petersburg Academy.

In 1866 he chose to live a life of reclusion to concentrate on undisturbed communion with God. Through his many books, he continued to teach. He encouraged the use of established prayers, to help believers know how to pray.

Descend from your head into your heart

You must descend from
your head into your heart.
At present your thoughts of God
are in your head. And God Himself is,
as it were, outside you, and
so your prayer and other spiritual
exercises
remain exterior. Whilst you are still
in your head,
thoughts will not easily be subdued but
will always be whirling about, like snow
in winter or
clouds of mosquitoes in summer.

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.

Patrick's Rune

Patrick’s Rune was written by an unidentified author, in the ancient Bearla Feine Irish dialect, as part of a longer piece called “St. Patrick’s Hymn Before Tarah” in the Liber Hymnorum ― a manuscript from the 11th Century (or earlier) ― which is preserved in the Trinity College Library in Dublin. It was also known as "The Faedh Fiada" or "The Cry of the Deer."

When Madeleine L’Engle was beginning to work on A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978) ― her third novel in the series that began with A Wrinkle In Time (1962) ― a friend who was visiting Iona in Scotland sent her a card which included Patrick’s Rune. L’Engle soon realized that she could organize all the plot details, she had already sketched out, around this poem. It became central to the novel’s organizational structure.

Perhaps because of how skilfully she wove the poem into the text of her story, many who post this fragment on the internet attribute the poem to her. It was, however, translated by J.C. Mangan.

Some early sources even attribute the poem to Patrick of Ireland, himself ― saying he composed it “on Easter Saturday, A.D. 433, on his way from Slane to the royal palace of Leogaire, at Tara, with seven clerical companions and the youthful St. Benignus, to shield himself and them against the wiles and plots of the druids and assassins appointed to compass his destruction.” More likely, it was written to commemorate this event, and may have been skilfully woven into a larger text.

Patrick’s Rune

At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place,
By God’s almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.

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.

Marjorie Pickthall

Marjorie Pickthall (1883―1922) is a writer and poet who served as an ambulance driver during WWI. At one time she was championed by conservative critics as the best Canadian poet of her generation ― valued as a moderate voice between populist poets such as Robert Service, and the influence of the modernists. Her reputation, however, has suffered the same fate as many Victorian and early 20th century poets, whose work fell out of fashion.

When she was still a 15-year-old student at Toronto’s Bishop Strachan School, one of her stories appeared in the major newspaper The Globe. While in her early twenties, she authored three adventure novels. Her writing also appeared in journals such as Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, and Scribner’s. Her first poetry collection, The Drift of Pinions (1913) was the first of five books she produced during the final decade of her life.

Although she had moved to Vancouver, her body is buried in St. James Cemetery, Toronto.

Adam and Eve

In the high noon of the heavenly garden
Where the angels sunned with the birds,
Beauty, before their hearts could harden,
Had taught them heavenly words.

When they fled in the burning weather
And nothing dawned but a dream,
Beauty fasted their hands together
And cooled them at her stream.

And when day wearied and night grew stronger,
And they slept as the beautiful must,
Then she bided a little longer,
And blossomed from their dust.

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.

Fenton Johnson

Fenton Johnson (1888―1958) is a Chicago poet, playwright and writer, who was a significant forerunner to the Harlem Renaissance. By the time he was nineteen, several of his plays had been performed at various Chicago theatres. His early aspiration was to become a pastor, but in the end he attended journalism school at Columbia University. He went on to teach at the State University of Louisville, in Kentucky, and to work as a journalist in New York.

The first of his three poetry collections, A Little Dreaming, appeared in 1913. Many of his poems are written in dialect, which was popular at the time, and enabled him to shed light on his observations of American black culture, and on racial issues. His short story collection Tales of Darkest America appeared in 1920, as did his essay collection For the Highest Good. He edited two little magazines: the Champion, and Favorite, and was an early contributor to Poetry magazine.

He never gained the recognition of a major writer; in the 1930s his literary output dwindled to a trickle.

Declaration

I love the world and all therein:
The panting, darkened souls who seek
A brighter light, a sweeter hope,
From those who drink the bubbling wine
And eat the flesh of tender fowl;
I love the pampered son of wealth,
And pour on him my pity's oil,
This world our God hath made for all, —
The East, the West, the black, the white,
The rich, the poor, the wise, the dumb, —
And even beasts may share the fruit;
No prison wall, but sunlight's glow,
No rods of steel, but arms of love,
For all that creep and walk and strive
And wear upon their countenance
Creation's mark, the kiss of God.

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.