Almighty God, great Source of All
A Hymn of the Early Church
Translated by John Brownlie
(from Hymns of the Early Church )

Almighty God, great Source of all,
Upholder of the earth and sea,
To whom Thy works unceasing call,
Throughout their vast immensity;
The heaven reflects Thy glory bright,
From sunlit dome, and starry height.
Dark clouds surround Thy kingly seat;
But where Thou art is peerless light;
There righteousness and mercy meet
In all their gentleness and might;
The beauty of Thy place of bliss
Is purity and holiness.

Almighty God! Thy power supreme
The rebel arm presumes to win,
While all the hosts of hell blaspheme,
And hurl the darts of death and sin;
But lo, the God-man, girt with might,
Hath turned the hosts of hell to flight.
Almighty God! we lift our eyes
To where the awful cross is raised,
And there, by holy sacrifice,
Behold the pride of sin abased;
And at His feet, whose love o’ercame,
Renew our fealty to Thy name.

“The Signs of Life ”
Liberty Hyde Bailey

[ from Wind and Weather: Poems --
Read the Book's Intro ]

Ha, ye dead thing upon the ground
How few of ye I’ve ever found
And I have tramped it far and wide
By wood and wash and ripple-side!

And often have I wondered where
The bodies of the dead misfare, —
Of all the multitudes of those
The variegated life compose
Of field and sea and air and earth
Throughout the planet’s spacious girth.

Some pass life’s full allotted span;
On some there is the ’scapeless ban
That takes them early to the pit—
Where be the graves of the unfit?

But soon or late the day is sped
And strong and weak alike are dead,
They meet the summons where they are
And ev’ry death is singular;
And yet these millions pass unseen
And leave scant trace to intervene.

The gaps fill in; the earth is rife
With energy that mastereth;—
The upward signs of birth and life
Are greater than the signs of death.

“Some keep the Sabbath going to church”
Emily Dickinson

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton — sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least –
I’m going, all along.

“Prayer”
by George Herbert
[ As featured in The Art of the Sonnet ]

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

“Further in Summer Than the Birds”
Emily Dickinson

Further in Summer than the Birds
Pathetic from the Grass
A minor Nation celebrates
Its unobtrusive Mass.

No Ordinance be seen
So gradual the Grace
A pensive Custom it becomes
Enlarging Loneliness.

Antiquest felt at Noon
When August burning low
Arise this spectral Canticle
Repose to typify

Remit as yet no Grace
No Furrow on the Glow
Yet a Druidic Difference
Enhances Nature now

“Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service”

T.S. Eliot

[ Found in Collected Poems 1909-1962 ]

Look, look, master, here comes two religious
caterpillars.
– The Jew of Malta.

Polyphiloprogenitive
The sapient sutlers of the Lord
Drift across the window-panes.
In the beginning was the Word.

In the beginning was the Word.
Superfetation of τὸ ἔν,
And at the mensual turn of time
Produced enervate Origen.

A painter of the Umbrian school
Designed upon a gesso ground
The nimbus of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned

But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoffending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
. . . . .
The sable presbyters approach
The avenue of penitence;
The young are red and pustular
Clutching piaculative pence.

Under the penitential gates
Sustained by staring Seraphim
Where the souls of the devout
Burn invisible and dim.

Along the garden-wall the bees
With hairy bellies pass between
The staminate and pistilate,
Blest office of the epicene.

Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools
Are controversial, polymath.

To the Cuckoo
William Wordsworth
[ As featured in Winged Wonders
(See our review above) ]

O blithe New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; that Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways
In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a hope, a love;
Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessèd Bird! the earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place;
That is fit home for Thee!

TREES
F.S. Flint

Elm trees
and the leaf the boy in me hated
long ago–
rough and sandy.

Poplars
and their leaves,
tender, smooth to the fingers,
and a secret in their smell
I have forgotten.

Oaks
and forest glades,
heart aching with wonder, fear:
their bitter mast.

Willows
and the scented beetle
we put in our handkerchiefs;
and the roots of one
that spread into a river:
nakedness, water and joy.

Hawthorn,
white and odorous with blossom,
framing the quiet fields,
and swaying flowers and grasses,
and the hum of bees.

Oh, these are the things that are with me now,
in the town;
and I am grateful
for this minute of my manhood.

“A Dancer Preparing to Move”

A Review of
Writing the Silences: Poems
by Richard Moore

Reviewed by Thomas T. Turner II

Writing the Silences: Poems
Richard Moore.
Hardback: U of California Press, 2010.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]

In her foreword to Richard O. Moore’s new book of poetry Writing the Silences, Brenda Hillman describes Moore’s poetry as evidence of a struggle “in relation to meaning itself, the idea of meaning in a world that has no easy gods or moral codes, a world in which institutions refuse to cooperate.” Hillman is apt to point this out, as the sheer brilliance of Moore’s poetry is found in the constant metaphysical probing for meaning in a post-Enlightenment world when such probing for meaning only leads to an endless chain of meaning upon meaning without any resolution. In effect, Moore writes his silences in Plato’s cave, the dim light of a fire giving up bits and pieces of poetic meaning before falling quickly back into the shadows of the cave.

Moore’s work is not a critique of modernism as much as it is a poetic realization of the world he was born into and writes about. Moore’s poem “Dog in the Forest” digs deep into the capriciousness of life and connects our metaphysical restlessness to acedia:

Can it be told when an ancient trace of faith
gave way under stress in every modern world?
. . .
There are paths which have left behind no odor of life.
. . .
Read the wind dream a sleep of unknowing lie down
with the Noonday Demon.

(more…)

A Thing of Beauty
John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
(more…)