Poetry to Enhance Preaching and Worship
Listed below are the full texts of some of the finest Christian poems in the English language, selected by Dr. Leland Ryken, retired professor of English at Wheaton College, author of numerous books on literature and theology, and a member of the Translation Oversight Committee for the English Standard Version. (Dr. Ryken also graciously supplied the select poems for Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter listed in chapter 2, “Annual Services,” as well as the select poems for weddings in chapter 3.)
Why this selection of Christian poems in The Pastor’s Book? Well, certainly not to promote the impression that we are well-read preachers given to poetic diction and fancy language. Rather, it is to increase our powers of expression by acquainting us with what the greatest Christian poetic minds have thought and said over the centuries on the key issues of life, thereby enhancing our powers of devotional expression. Reading these enduring masterpieces will enrich our stores of metaphor, as, for example, does George Herbert’s image of “reversed thunder” as a description of the power of petitionary prayer. Likewise, aphoristic expressions, such as William Shakespeare’s depiction of his soul as “the center of my sinful earth,” say it perfectly for every honest soul. Poetic expressions are compact and pithy, and have a way of penetrating and detonating in the soul. Stored in the preacher’s consciousness, they elevate the preaching of the Word.
This said, poetry must be carefully employed in pulpit discourse. Great poetry is often initially opaque, which means that preachers must be selective in choosing outtakes because the preaching of God’s Word must be clear. Generally, the quotations must be short and readily comprehensible—perhaps a shimmering phrase or a stanza or two, such as this stanza from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Strong Son of God”:
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We know that God intends for you and your parishioners to understand and love poetry because at least a third of the Bible comes to us in poetic form. We suggest that you take the time to read these magnificent poems through so that you are acquainted with the best of the best, noting the lines and thoughts that particularly strike you and elevate your devotion to Christ—and that will likely prove useful in your preaching of God’s holy Word.
“Aaron” (George Herbert)
Holiness on the head,
Light and perfections on the breast,
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
To lead them unto life and rest:
Thus are true Aarons dressed.
Profaneness in my head,
Defects and darkness in my breast,
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest:
Poor priest, thus am I dressed.
Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
Another music, making live, not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest:
In him I am well dressed.
Christ is my only head,
My alone-only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me even dead,
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him new-dressed.
So, holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine tuned by Christ (who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest),
Come people; Aaron’s dressed.
“As Kingfishers Catch Fire” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves—goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—
Chríst—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
“At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” (John Donne)
The speaker in the following poem contemplates the last judgment in light of his personal sinfulness. First he invokes the last day to happen immediately, and then he reconsiders and asks that it be delayed so he can repent.
At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o’erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For if above all these my sins abound,
’Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there; here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.
“Batter My Heart” (John Donne)
Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
“The Collar” (George Herbert)
I struck the board, and cried, “No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away! take heed;
I will abroad.
Call in thy death’s-head there; tie up thy fears;
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need
Deserves his load.”
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied My Lord.
“Crossing the Bar” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
“Death, Be Not Proud” (John Donne)
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures 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 art 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 swellest thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
“The Elixir” (George Herbert)
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.
Not rudely, as a beast,
To run into an action;
But still to make Thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection.
A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or it he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.
All may of Thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture—“for Thy sake”—
Will not grow bright and clean.
A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.
This is the famous stone
That turneth all to gold;
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.
“Epitaph on Himself” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
Stop, Christian passer-by! Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
A poet lies, or that which once seemed he.
O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;
That he who many a year with toil of breath
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise—to be forgiven for fame
He asked, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same!
“For His Wife, on Her Birthday” (Charles Wesley)
Come away to the skies.
My beloved, arise,
And rejoice in the day thou wast born;
On this festival day,
Come exulting away,
And with singing to Zion return.
We have laid up our love
And our treasure above,
Though our bodies continue below,
The redeemed of the Lord
Will remember his word,
And with singing to paradise go.
Now with singing and praise,
Let us spend all the days,
By our heavenly Father bestowed,
While his grace we receive
From his bounty, and live
To the honor and glory of God.
For the glory we were
First created to share,
Both the nature and kingdom divine!
Now created again
That our souls may remain,
Throughout time and eternity thine.
We with thanks to approve,
The design of that love
Which hath joined us to Jesus’s name;
Let us never more part,
Till we meet at the feast of the Lamb.
There, O! there at his feet,
We shall all likewise meet,
And be parted in body no more;
We shall sing to our lyres,
With the heavenly choirs,
And our Savior in glory adore.
Hallelujah we sing,
To our Father and King,
And his rapturous praises repeat:
To the Lamb that was slain,
Hallelujah again,
Sing, all heaven and fall at his feet.
“God’s Grandeur” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
“The Good Shepherd” (Lope de Vega)
Shepherd! who with thine amorous, sylvan song
Hast broken the slumber that encompassed me,
Who mad’st Thy crook from the accursed tree,
On which Thy powerful arms were stretched so long!
Lead me to mercy’s ever-flowing fountains;
For Thou my shepherd, guard, and guide shalt be;
I will obey Thy voice, and wait to see
Thy feet all beautiful upon the mountains.
Hear, Shepherd!—Thou who for thy flock art dying.
O, wash away these scarlet sins, for Thou
Rejoicest at the contrite sinner’s vow.
Oh, wait! to Thee my weary soul is crying,
Wait for me: Yet why ask it, when I see,
With feet nailed to the cross, Thou’rt waiting still for me!
(trans. Henry W. Longfellow)
“Hark, My Soul” (John Austen)
Hark, my soul, how everything
Strives to serve our bounteous King;
Each a double tribute pays;
Sings its part, and then obeys.
Nature’s chief and sweetest choir
Him with cheerful notes admire;
Chanting every day their lauds,
While the grove their song applauds.
Though their voices lower be,
Streams have too their melody;
Night and day they warbling run,
Never pause, but still sing on.
Only we can scarce afford
This short office to our Lord;
We, on whom His bounty flows,
All things gives, and nothing owes.
Wake! for shame, my sluggish heart,
Wake! and gladly sing thy part;
Learn of birds, and springs, and flowers,
How to use thy nobler powers.
Live for ever, glorious Lord,
Live, by all Thy works adored;
One in Three, and Three in One,
Thrice we bow to Thee alone.
“How Soon Hath Time” (John Milton)
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom showeth.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth
That I to manhood am arrived so near;
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endueth.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heav’n:
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Task-Master’s eye.
“Hymn” (Caedmon)
Written in Old English, “Caedmon’s Hymn” (as it is familiarly known) is the oldest extant English poem. The version that appears below is the editor’s translation.
Now we must praise the Keeper of Heaven’s Kingdom,
The power of the Lord and his wisdom,
The work of the Glory-Father, when he of every wonder,
The eternal Lord, the beginning established.
He first created for the sons of earth
Heaven as a roof, Holy Creator.
Then middle-earth the Protector of mankind,
Eternal Lord, afterwards made
For men, the earth, the Lord almighty.
“I Never Saw a Moor” (Emily Dickinson)
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.
“The Kingdom of God” (Francis Thompson)
O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air—
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!—
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places—
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry—clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!
“Lady That in the Prime of Earliest Youth” (John Milton)
Lady that in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely has shunned the broad way and the green,
And with those few art eminently seen
That labor up the hill of heavenly Truth,
The better part with Mary and with Ruth
Chosen thou hast, and they that overween
And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen,
No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.
Thy care is fixed and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure
Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends
Passes to bliss at the mid-hour of night,
Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure.
“The Lamb” (William Blake)
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee,
Gave thee life and bid thee feed
By the stream and o’er the mead,
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb:
He is meek and he is mild,
He became a little child:
I a child and thou a lamb,
We are called by his name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
“Leave Me, O Love” (Sir Philip Sidney)
This poem belongs to the genre known as palinode—a poem in renunciation of romantic love. The devotional aspect of the poem emerges if we read it as (1) a mosaic of biblical allusions and (2) a meditation on Colossians 3:2—“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust;
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust;
Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beams and humble all thy might
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;
Which breaks the clouds and opens forth the light,
That both doth shine and give us sight to see.
O take fast hold; let that light be thy guide
In this small course which birth draws out to death,
And think how evil becometh him to slide,
Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.
Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see:
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.
“Love (III)” (George Herbert)
Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked any thing.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
From “The Marshes of Glynn” (Sidney Lanier)
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod,
Behold, I will build me a nest on the greatness of God:
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies
In the freedom that fills all the space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod
I will heartily lay me ahold on the greatness of God:
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn.
“Methought I Saw My Late Espousèd Saint” (John Milton)
Methought I saw my late espousèd saint
Brought to me like Alcestus from the grave,
Whom Jove’s great Son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the Old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
So clear as in no face with more delight.
But O, as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.
“My Song Is Love Unknown” (Samuel Crossman)
My song is love unknown,
My Savior’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I,
That for my sake
My Lord should take
Frail flesh and die?
He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed-for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend,
My Friend indeed,
Who at my need
His life did spend.
Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing,
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King.
Then “Crucify!”
Is all their breath,
They thirst and cry.
Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries!
Yet they at these
Themselves displease,
And ’gainst Him rise.
They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
The Prince of life they slay.
Yet cheerful
He to suffering goes,
That He His foes
From thence might free.
Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
In Whose sweet praise
I all my days
Could gladly spend.
“None Other Lamb” (Christina Rossetti)
None other Lamb, none other Name,
None other hope in heaven or earth or sea,
None other hiding place from guilt and shame,
None beside thee!
My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart’s desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to thee.
Lord, thou art Life, though I be dead;
Love’s fire thou art, however cold I be:
Nor heaven have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but thee.
“O Deus, ego amo te” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
O God, I love thee, I love thee—
Not out of hope of heaven for me
Nor fearing not to love and be
In the everlasting burning.
Thou, thou, my Jesus, after me
Didst reach thine arms out dying,
For my sake sufferedst nails, and lance,
Mocked and marred countenance,
Sorrows passing number,
Sweat and care and cumber,
Yea and death, and this for me,
And thou couldst see me sinning:
Then I, why should I not love thee,
Jesu, so much in love with me?
Not for heaven’s sake;
Not to be out of hell by loving thee;
Not for any gains I see;
But just the way that thou didst me
I do love and I will love thee:
What must I love thee, Lord, for then?
For being my king and God. Amen.
(trans. Francis Xavier)
“O What Their Joy” (Peter Abelard)
O what their joy and their glory must be,
Those endless Sabbaths the blessèd ones see;
Crown for the valiant, to weary ones rest:
God shall be All, and in all ever blest.
What are the Monarch, his court and his throne?
What are the peace and the joy that they own?
O that the blest ones, who in it have share,
All that they feel could as fully declare!
Truly, “Jerusalem” name we that shore,
City of peace that brings joy evermore;
Wish and fulfillment are not severed there,
Nor do things prayed for come short of the prayer.
There, where no troubles distraction can bring,
We the sweet anthems of Zion shall sing;
While for thy grace, Lord, their voices of praise
Thy blessed people eternally raise.
Now, in the meantime, with hearts raised on high,
We for that country must yearn and must sigh,
Seeking Jerusalem, dear native land,
Through our long exile on Babylon’s strand.
Low before him with our praises we fall,
Of whom and in whom and through whom are all;
Of whom, the Father; and in whom, the Son;
And through whom, the Spirit, with them ever One.
(trans. John Mason Neale)
From “Ode on the Death of Mrs. Anne Killegrew” (John Dryden)
John Dryden’s ten-stanza poem is a panegyric and eulogy for musician Anne Killegrew. In the last stanza, Dryden’s imagination soars above the occasion of the poem as he takes us to the last day and final judgment.
When in mid-air, the golden trump shall sound,
To raise the nations under ground;
When in the valley of Jehosophat,
The Judging God shall close the book of fate,
And there the last Assizes keep,
For those who wake, and those who sleep;
When rattling bones together fly,
From the four corners of the sky,
When sinews o’er the skeletons are spread,
Those clothed with flesh, and life inspires the dead;
The sacred poets first shall hear the sound,
And foremost from the tomb shall bound:
For they are covered with the lightest ground,
And straight, with in-born vigor, on the wing,
Like mounting larks, to the new morning sing.
There thou, sweet saint, before the choir shall go,
As harbinger of Heaven, the way to show,
The way which thou so well hast learned below.
From “On Another’s Sorrow” (William Blake)
He doth give His joy to all:
He becomes an infant small,
He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou can sigh a sigh,
And thy Maker is not by:
Think not thou canst weep a tear,
And thy Maker is not near.
O He gives to us his joy,
That our grief He may destroy:
Till our grief is fled and gone
He doth sit by us and moan.
“On Time” (John Milton)
Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummet’s pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And merely mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entombed,
And last of all, thy greedy self consumed
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, to whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heavenly-guided soul shall clime,
Then all this Earthy grossness quit,
Attired with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee O Time.
From Paradise Lost, Book 12 (John Milton)
The following passage appears just before the conclusion of Milton’s grand epic. The context is that Adam has received a vision of fallen history, ending with the atoning death of Jesus. Adam’s response is the moment of epiphany toward which the whole poem moves.
Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God; to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His providence, and on him sole depend,
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek; that suffering for truth’s sake
Is fortitude to highest victory,
And, to the faithful, death the gate of life;
Taught this by his example, whom I now
Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest.
“Peace” (Henry Vaughan)
My Soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands a wingéd sentry
All skillful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger
Sweet Peace sits, crowned with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend
And (O my Soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure,
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.
“Pied Beauty” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-color as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
“Prayer” (George Herbert)
Prayer, the church’s banquet, angel’s age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against the Almighty, sinner’s tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best;
Heaven in ordinary, man well dressed;
The milky way, the bird of Paradise;
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.
“The Pulley” (George Herbert)
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.”
So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
“For if I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.”
“The Quality of Mercy” (from The Merchant of Venice) (William Shakespeare)
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 thronéd monarch better than his crown;
His scepter 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 sceptered sway;
It is enthroned 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.
“Sonnet 14, On the Religious Memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, My Christian Friend, Deceased Dec. 16, 1646” (John Milton)
When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never,
Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God,
Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load
Of death, called life, which us from life doth sever.
Thy works and alms and all thy good endeavor
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
Followed up to joy and bliss for ever.
Love led them on, and Faith who knew them best,
Thy hand maids, clad them o’er with purple beams
And azure wings, that up they flew so dressed,
And spake the truth of thee in glorious themes
Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.
“Sonnet 146” (William Shakespeare)
The Middle Ages produced a religious and literary tradition known by the Latin phrase contemptus mundi—“contempt of the world.” Poems in this tradition elevate the heavenly and spiritual over the earthly and physical. The following sonnet by Shakespeare belongs to this tradition (as does “Leave Me, O Love” by Philip Sidney, cited above).
Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth,
[Foiled by] these rebel powers that thee array,
Why dost thou pine within, and suffer dearth,
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?
Why so large cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess,
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body’s end?
Then soul, live thou upon thy servant’s loss,
And let that pine to aggravate thy store;
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;
Within be fed, without be rich no more:
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men,
And, Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.
“Spring” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy pear tree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.—Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
“The Starlight Night” (Gerard Manley Hopkins)
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.
Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.
“Strong Son of God” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how,
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seemed my sin in me,
What seemed my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
“Up-Hill” (Christina Rossetti)
The following poem has been interpreted in a variety of ways. It becomes a devotional poem on the hope of heaven if we read the questions in each stanza as expressing the weariness that we feel on the journey of life and the answers to the questions (perhaps even spoken by Christ) as affirming the reality of heaven.
Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
“Virtue” (George Herbert)
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night,
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye;
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie;
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
“When I Consider How My Light Is Spent” (John Milton)
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Also see selections from the following works by T. S. Eliot:
“Little Gidding”
“The Rock”
Murder in the Cathedral