To what end do we suffer? To what end, really, do we fall on our faces? For what good are sin and folly and loss and waste?
We make such fools of ourselves! I'd hate to be in the same room at a party with the me of twenty years ago! I'd hide my face and pray that no one recognized us as the same guy!
Our past is, thank God, past! It is done! It will no longer plague us!
Jesus died to take it away as far as the east is from the west, etc.
And yet; and yet; and yet. . .
Was it all for nothing? Were we simply awaiting what Francis Thompson calls "love's uplifted stroke" in which our pasts vanish?
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
Showing posts with label Francis Thompson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Francis Thompson. Show all posts
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Playing The Part Of Poet
Garbage can be literature. The voice is all. That is the main concept that I always strove to leave with my literature students. The filth on bathroom walls might be literature, albeit a low form of it. And eloquence might fall short.
To qualify as literature, a group of words (usually but not always written) must leave us access to the real voice of the author or authors.
To qualify as literature, a group of words (usually but not always written) must leave us access to the real voice of the author or authors.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
My Soul Round Me Doth Roll
Even Perfection Craves Diversity
Over the years many poets have played with the meter of their poems, trying out different schemes just for the fun of seeing how they work. Some work well, others don't.
For Milton's Paradise Lost, his celebrated blank verse was indubitably the right choice. Throughout the book he sticks very close to the consistent use of the five stressed line, borrowing what has been called "Marlowe's mighy line."
Over the years many poets have played with the meter of their poems, trying out different schemes just for the fun of seeing how they work. Some work well, others don't.
For Milton's Paradise Lost, his celebrated blank verse was indubitably the right choice. Throughout the book he sticks very close to the consistent use of the five stressed line, borrowing what has been called "Marlowe's mighy line."
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Angels Keep Their Ancient Places
Homeless, friendless, hopelessly addicted to opium, half naked in the cold rain of a London night as he tried to sleep on a bench beside the Thames, Francis Thompson was perhaps not an uncommon sight either then or now. But who that saw him could have guessed what brilliance his bloodshot eyes beheld as he lay there staring through his tears out over the river?
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
O WORLD invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Spotted Teeth and Lepers Cleansed
John Collop wrote in the mid 1600's what I think to be one of the greatest prayer poems outside of the Bible. Its halting, jumping, eager rush and fearful stop perfectly reflect the tears with which he calls out to his God.
The tone, intimacy and vehemence, and the writhing/evolving pace of the poem put one in mind of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Francis Thompson, but it is almost certain that neither of them ever read him (very unlikely they read each other either, although it is slightly possible that Hopkins late in his life may have read some Thompson). Collop simply wasn't known during their lifetimes. In fact he wasn't known in his own lifetime.
He was a doctor and many of his poems are medical lessons set to verse. Rather dull! Others are a mockery of the fashion of writing poems in praise of beautiful women; ie, "There is a garden in your face where roses and white lillies grow. . ."
ON PENTEPICTA
The wiseman Teeth call'd flocks of sheep;
Sure Jacob's speckled flocks here keep.
Where teeth are checker'd black and white,
Nay gilt too to inrich delight:
Her mouth ope, you at Chesse may play,
With teeth resembling night and day.
Each fondling reach will praise what's white;
Is there in Choak such strange delight?
Give me the mouth like th' Temple floor,
With speckled Marble paved o're,
Or oh more rich in gold thus set,
A row of pearl then one of jet.
Still other of Collop's poems are diatribes against the state of politics or the state of the Church. These are really a mixed bag, sometimes pointed and sharp, witty jabs with his pen, sometimes they descend into what seems to be juvenile name calling.
But in his personal religious verse he shines.
THE LEPER CLEANSED
Hear, Lord, hear
The rhetoric of a tear.
Hear, hear my breast;
While I knock there, Lord, take no rest.
Open! ah, open wide!
Thou art the door, Lord! Open! hide
My sin; a spear once entered at thy side.
See! ah, see
A Naaman's leprosy!
Yet here appears
A cleansing Jordan in my tears.
Lord, let the faithless see
Miracles ceased, revive in me.
The leper cleansed, blind healed, dead raised by thee.
Whither! ah, whither shall I fly?
To heaven? my sins, ah, sins there cry!
Yet mercy, Lord, O mercy! hear
Th'attoning incense of my prayer.
A broken heart thou'lt not despise.
See! see a contrite's sacrifice!
Keep, keep, vials of wrath, keep still!
I'll vials, Lord, of odors fill:
Of prayers, sighs, groans, and tears a shower;
I'll 'noint, wash, wipe, kiss, wash, wipe, weep.
My tears, Lord, in thy bottle keep,
Lest flames of lust, and fond desire,
Kindle fresh fuel for thine ire,
Which tears must quench; like Magdalene
I'll wash thee, Lord, till I be clean.
The tone, intimacy and vehemence, and the writhing/evolving pace of the poem put one in mind of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Francis Thompson, but it is almost certain that neither of them ever read him (very unlikely they read each other either, although it is slightly possible that Hopkins late in his life may have read some Thompson). Collop simply wasn't known during their lifetimes. In fact he wasn't known in his own lifetime.
He was a doctor and many of his poems are medical lessons set to verse. Rather dull! Others are a mockery of the fashion of writing poems in praise of beautiful women; ie, "There is a garden in your face where roses and white lillies grow. . ."
ON PENTEPICTA
The wiseman Teeth call'd flocks of sheep;
Sure Jacob's speckled flocks here keep.
Where teeth are checker'd black and white,
Nay gilt too to inrich delight:
Her mouth ope, you at Chesse may play,
With teeth resembling night and day.
Each fondling reach will praise what's white;
Is there in Choak such strange delight?
Give me the mouth like th' Temple floor,
With speckled Marble paved o're,
Or oh more rich in gold thus set,
A row of pearl then one of jet.
Still other of Collop's poems are diatribes against the state of politics or the state of the Church. These are really a mixed bag, sometimes pointed and sharp, witty jabs with his pen, sometimes they descend into what seems to be juvenile name calling.
But in his personal religious verse he shines.
THE LEPER CLEANSED
Hear, Lord, hear
The rhetoric of a tear.
Hear, hear my breast;
While I knock there, Lord, take no rest.
Open! ah, open wide!
Thou art the door, Lord! Open! hide
My sin; a spear once entered at thy side.
See! ah, see
A Naaman's leprosy!
Yet here appears
A cleansing Jordan in my tears.
Lord, let the faithless see
Miracles ceased, revive in me.
The leper cleansed, blind healed, dead raised by thee.
Whither! ah, whither shall I fly?
To heaven? my sins, ah, sins there cry!
Yet mercy, Lord, O mercy! hear
Th'attoning incense of my prayer.
A broken heart thou'lt not despise.
See! see a contrite's sacrifice!
Keep, keep, vials of wrath, keep still!
I'll vials, Lord, of odors fill:
Of prayers, sighs, groans, and tears a shower;
I'll 'noint, wash, wipe, kiss, wash, wipe, weep.
My tears, Lord, in thy bottle keep,
Lest flames of lust, and fond desire,
Kindle fresh fuel for thine ire,
Which tears must quench; like Magdalene
I'll wash thee, Lord, till I be clean.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Francis Thompson at Bay
Francis Thompson never became the priest that he had hoped to become when still a young man. One wonders how things might have played out if his father had not insisted that Francis train to follow in his footsteps as a physician. Thompson failed the exam three times, probably on purpose, or at least by not trying. Then he moved to London.
There he found little he could do, and he sank into abject poverty and drug addiction. The addiction was likely started by prescriptions during an illness, but it plagued him for years. Homeless, jobless, nearly naked and starving almost to the point of death on the cold wet streets of London, he was rescued by a prostitute.
In her room he began to write. He sent some poems to a paper and was immediately accepted. But the problem was, where was his payment to be sent? The editor's search for Thompson is one of the legends of literary history. "A genius greater than Milton is among us, and nobody knows his address!" he exclaimed in an editorial.
The following is excerpts from The Hound of Heaven. He wrote this while in drug rehab to which the editor sent him when he finally located Thompson. It is a longish poem, slightly less than half is here presented. This is the first section and then the end, when the Hound brings its quarry to bay. I have omitted the middle section of the quarry fleeing from hiding place to hiding place, finding them all unsuited and useless to him.
If you find unfamiliar words, don't bother looking them up. Many are archaic, or even Middle English. Others are simply words that Thompson invented himself. But that presents no difficulty at all, in the magic of the poem. The sense is carried over the obscurity of some of the words by the flow of the poem.
from THE HOUND OF HEAVEN
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat -- and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet --
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of his approach would clash it to:
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
. . .
Naked I wait Thy Love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must--
Designer infinite!--
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!
"Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."
There he found little he could do, and he sank into abject poverty and drug addiction. The addiction was likely started by prescriptions during an illness, but it plagued him for years. Homeless, jobless, nearly naked and starving almost to the point of death on the cold wet streets of London, he was rescued by a prostitute.
In her room he began to write. He sent some poems to a paper and was immediately accepted. But the problem was, where was his payment to be sent? The editor's search for Thompson is one of the legends of literary history. "A genius greater than Milton is among us, and nobody knows his address!" he exclaimed in an editorial.
The following is excerpts from The Hound of Heaven. He wrote this while in drug rehab to which the editor sent him when he finally located Thompson. It is a longish poem, slightly less than half is here presented. This is the first section and then the end, when the Hound brings its quarry to bay. I have omitted the middle section of the quarry fleeing from hiding place to hiding place, finding them all unsuited and useless to him.
If you find unfamiliar words, don't bother looking them up. Many are archaic, or even Middle English. Others are simply words that Thompson invented himself. But that presents no difficulty at all, in the magic of the poem. The sense is carried over the obscurity of some of the words by the flow of the poem.
from THE HOUND OF HEAVEN
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat -- and a voice beat
More instant than the Feet --
"All things betray thee, who betrayest Me."
I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of his approach would clash it to:
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
. . .
Naked I wait Thy Love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years--
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must--
Designer infinite!--
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?
Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
"And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest me!
"Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught" (He said),
"And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited--
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me."
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