Poem for April 2018 'I love all Beauteous Things' by Robert Bridges

                            I love all Beauteous Things     

                                    By Robert Bridges, 1890

I love all beauteous things,

I seek and adore them;

God hath no better praise,

And man in his hasty days

Is honoured for them.

I too will something make

And joy in the making;

Although tomorrow it seem

   Like the empty words of a dream

Remembered on waking.

Poem for March 2018: 'Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward ' by John Donne

'Good Friday, 1613, Riding Westward '

       by John Donne

LET man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this,
Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is ;
And as the other spheres, by being grown
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a year their natural form obey ;
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.

Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die ;
What a death were it then to see God die ?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes ?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us ? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn ?

If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them ; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity ;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.

Source:Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I., E. K. Chambers, ed., London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 172-173.

Source:Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I., E. K. Chambers, ed., London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 172-173.

A snow moment

For as long as I can remember snow has filled me with joy, even with happiness. However, there is not the one well-defined happiness-inducing snow moment – bright sunshine from a blue sky in a pristine white hilly landscape with a perfect long-distance track across it — in fact, snow can transform the same landscape and make it appear entirely different — and each appearance evokes a special mood.

When the first snow falls from low-hanging clouds in a dark sky and envelops the environment in a profound silence, a solemn and yet cheerful mood lays hold of me. Time and again I lift my eyes to the window and watch the flakes dancing and finally settling on hedges, on fences and fence posts, forming streaks of white on the black boughs of the leafless tress and covering the fields with a thin layer of powdered sugar that thickens gradually until it spreads over them like a white blanket. Soon white bonnets have formed on all raised surfaces and even the roads are covered in snow in which tyre tracks are imprinted. All noise — be it from voices or vehicles or construction — appears muffled or has faded into silence as if the world stood still in an extended moment of prayer and meditation.

In the final sentences of his story ‘The Dead’ James Joyce captured such a snow moment more than 100 years ago.

 

[,,,]

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

James Joyce (1914) ‘The Dead’, in Dubliners. Granada Publishing Limited, 1981, p. 160-201