Horatio Gates Spafford

Horatio Gates Spafford (1828—1888) is famous for penning the words to the famous hymn “It Is Well With My Soul” which Philip Bliss later put to music. Spafford and his wife were close friends and supporters of the evangelist Dwight L. Moody. His booklet Waiting For The Morning and Other Poems was published by H.F. Revell (Chicago) in 1878.

Spafford’s tragic story is almost as well-known as the hymn. In 1873, his wife and four daughters were crossing the Atlantic aboard the steamship SS Ville de Havre when it collided with another vessel. Spafford’s wife, Anna, survived, but all four girls perished. According to another daughter who was born after this event, Horatio Spafford wrote the first four stanzas of “It Is Well With My Soul” on his ocean journey to meet his wife in England. The place where their daughters drowned was shown to him, which for us gives even greater power to the simile in the second line.

After returning to Chicago, the Spaffords became preoccupied with views that were inconsistent with those of their Presbyterian community. They left their church and held prayer meetings in their home. In 1881 they moved to Jerusalem to establish The American Colony there.

It Is Well With My Soul

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

(Refrain:) It is well (it is well),
with my soul (with my soul),
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
(Refrain)

My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
(Refrain)

For me, be it Christ, be it Christ hence to live:
If Jordan above me shall roll,
No pain shall be mine, for in death as in life
Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul.
(Refrain)

And Lord haste the day, when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.
(Refrain)

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.

Mary Oliver*

Mary Oliver (1935—2019) is one of the best-selling contemporary poets in the United States. Her poems are far more often about the natural world — about birds and trees and marshes — than about people; even so she has written many poems about Jesus, and about Christian faith. Her style is accessible, and earnest. She once said in an interview, "One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn't be fancy." She died of lymphoma on Thursday (January 17th).

Jewish Rabbi Jeffery Salkin wrote on the day of her passing, “Mary Oliver rejects logical explanation. She leaves room for uncertainty; in fact, she embraces it.” He quotes from one of her recent poems:
-----“I have refused to live
-----locked in the orderly house of
-----reasons and proofs.
-----The world I live in and believe in
-----is wider than that. And anyway,
-----what’s wrong with Maybe? ...”

The following poem was written much earlier.

Maybe

Sweet Jesus, talking
-----his melancholy madness,
----------stood up in the boat
---------------and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry.
-----So everybody was saved
----------that night.
---------------But you know how it is
when something
-----different crosses
----------the threshold — the uncles
---------------mutter together,
the women walk away,
-----the young brother begins
----------to sharpen his knife.
---------------Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
-----like the wind over the water —
----------sometimes, for days,
---------------you don't think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon,
-----after the multitude was fed,
----------one or two of them felt
---------------the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight
-----before exhaustion,
----------that wants to swallow everything,
---------------gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy,
-----as they are now, forgetting
----------how the wind tore at the sails
---------------before he rose and talked to it —
tender and luminous and demanding
-----as he always was —
----------a thousand times more frightening
---------------than the killer storm.

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

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

Juan Ruiz

Juan Ruiz the Archpriest of Hita (c. 1283—c. 1350) is a Castilian poet and cleric, who wrote in his masterwork The Book of Good Love (1643) both verse about the spiritual love of God, and tales of men pursuing carnal love.

Little is known about the author, other than he was the Archpriest in the Spanish village of Hita, and that he was probably imprisoned, as his own work expresses.

The following poem was translated by Mack Singleton

Invocation

Oh God, Who Father art and Son, and likewise Spirit Holy,
Of Blessed Virgin Mother born [and gentle Maiden lowly]—
The strength send us Thy name to praise in canticle
-----and rhyme!
Our shield and mantle be Thou, Lord, [through years
-----and days of time]!

May He Who heaven fashion did, and earth contrive and sea,
His light and grace abiding send [a lowly sinner,] me!
From shining verses’ pleasant sheaf then book will I devise
That men who hear its measures may both gladdened be,
-----[and wise].

O Lord most high, my Savior dear, Who mankind wrought
-----[from dross],
On Archpriest-this, thy strength bestow [to bear his
-----dreary cross].
Then book of courtesy I’ll write shall men’s hearts
-----all refresh;
Their souls ‘twill bring some profit, and some healing to
-----their flesh.

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.

Barbara Crooker*

Barbara Crooker is a Pennsylvania poet who has just had her eighth poetry collection, The Book of Kells, published, as part of the Poiema Poetry Series from Cascade Books. It is, of course, inspired by the ninth century manuscript of the four Gospels known as The Book of Kells: “Ireland's greatest cultural treasure and the world's most famous medieval manuscript.”

She received a writing fellowship at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, County Monaghan, Ireland. While in Ireland she meditated on pages of the Book of Kells in the Long Library, Trinity College, Dublin. She also remotely studied various pages which are now accessible online.

The Book of Kells is the second Barbara Crooker book I have been fortunate enough to edit with her. She has also had a poem recently appear in my new web-journal Poems For Ephesians, which is on the McMaster Divinity College website.

The following poem first appeared in Presence, and is from The Book of Kells.

Trinity College, the Book of Kells

10/19/13 page of the day: Portrait of St. John, folio 291v and 292r

In a dim room, the Gospel of John rises, pure gold
in the gloom: In the beginning was the word,
and the word was made flesh. John’s seated
on a throne of ultramarine, haloed
in plaits of light. He’s my tribe, a scribe,
notebook in one hand, pen in the other. Around him,
tattooed in vellum, interlace knots, no beginning
or end. The more I stare in this darkness,
the less I see, patterns too small for my retinae,
these aging eyes. Made from pigments of verdigris,
orpiment, lampblack and woad, is it a vision,
or merely a dream? Metalwork or woven ribbons,
this is the universe recast as pattern, and I draw in
a breath, Word of God on my tongue.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Barbara Crooker: first post, second post, fourth post.

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.

Svetlana Marisova

Svetlana Marisova (1990—2011) is a poet who specialized in haiku and other Japanese poetic forms. She was born in Russia, where her family experienced religious persecution. In 2004 they moved to New Zealand. In her late teens she believed she was being called to a life of contemplative prayer. In 2009 she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

The first book to gather her poetry is the posthumous Be Still and Know (with Ted van Zutphen) which was published by Karakia Press. In 2014 Language and Silence (Karakia) also appeared.

Four Untitled Haiku

-----(1)
silent night
the flute hiding
in bamboo

-----(2)
born of grief and pain
the ceremony of blood —
a dark rose blooming

-----(3)
deep within
I dissolve; I dissolve
into God

-----(4)
silent night —
the unacceptable word
takes flesh

This post was suggested by Ryan Apple.

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.

James Montgomery

James Montgomery (1771—1854) is a Scottish poet, hymn writer and journalist, who was raised in the Moravian Church. In his youth he desired to be a poet, and travelled to London to find a publisher. When this was unsuccessful he moved to Sheffield, where he apprenticed himself to Joseph Gales: a bookseller and the publisher of The Sheffield Register.

These were not the days of a free press. In 1794, Gales fled England to avoid political persecution. James Montgomery immediately took over the paper, renaming it The Sheffield Iris. In this role he was twice imprisoned for sedition; once in 1795 for publishing a poem celebrating the fall of the Bastille, and again the following year for criticizing a magistrate who forcibly broke up a protest in Sheffield.

His poems were often political in theme and epic in proportions, such as his The Wanderer of Switzerland (1806). This poem was criticized in the conservative Edinburgh Review, but subsequently defended by Lord Byron. Montgomery condemned the use of poor children as chimney sweeps in The Climbing Boys' Soliloquies, a theme William Blake had addressed in “The Chimney Sweeper.”

Montgomery also wrote many hymns, and suspected that these would be his best chance to be remembered. The following Christmas hymn remains popular, although not all of its fine stanzas are commonly sung.

Angels From The Realms Of Glory

Angels from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o’er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation’s story
Now proclaim Messiah’s birth.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Shepherds, in the field abiding,
Watching o’er your flocks by night,
God with us is now residing;
Yonder shines the infant light:

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great Desire of nations;
Ye have seen His natal star.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Saints, before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear;
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In His temple shall appear.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Sinners, wrung with true repentance,
Doomed for guilt to endless pains,
Justice now revokes the sentence,
Mercy calls you; break your chains.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

Though an Infant now we view Him,
He shall fill His Father’s throne,
Gather all the nations to Him;
Every knee shall then bow down:

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

All creation, join in praising
God, the Father, Spirit, Son,
Evermore your voices raising
To the eternal Three in One.

Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King.

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.

Richard Wilbur*

Richard Wilbur (1921—2017) is one of the most significant poets of his generation. Twice he won the Pulitzer Prize, and he was the U.S. Poet Laureate in 1987-1988.

He said in an interview with the Paris Review: “I feel that the universe is full of glorious energy, that the energy tends to take pattern and shape, and that the ultimate character of things is comely and good. I am perfectly aware that I say this in the teeth of all sorts of contrary evidence, and that I must be basing it partly on temperament and partly on faith, but that’s my attitude.”

Several of his poems appear in my anthology The Turning Aside: The Kingdom Poets Book of Contemporary Christian Poetry (2016, Cascade Books).

Besides the extensive contribution of his own poetry, Wilbur is also an important translator of French plays into English, particularly those of Molière (10 plays), Racine (3 plays) and Corneille (3 plays).

My first encounter with the following poem, was in a beautiful musical rendition of it by the Canadian singer Steve Bell.

A Christmas Hymn

"And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.

And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out."
—St. Luke XIX, 39-40

A stable-lamp is lighted
Whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
And straw like gold shall shine;
A barn shall harbor heaven,
A stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city
Shall ride in triumph by;
The palm shall strew its branches,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
Though heavy, dull, and dumb,
And lie within the roadway
To pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
And yielded up to die;
The sky shall groan and darken,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
For stony hearts of men:
God's blood upon the spearhead,
God's love refused again.

But now, as at the ending,
The low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices,
And every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
In praises of the child
By whose descent among us
The worlds are reconciled.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about Richard Wilbur: 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.