The Soul in Paraphrase E-Book

Leland Ryken

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 323

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Christians throughout the ages have written poetry as a way to commune with and teach about God, communicating rich truths and enduring beauty through their art. These poems, when read devotionally, provide a unique way for Christians to deepen their spiritual insight and experience. In this collection of over 90 poems by poets such as Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Frost, William Shakespeare, and over 30 more, literary expert Leland Ryken introduces readers to the best of the best in devotional poetry, providing commentary that helps them see and appreciate not only the literary beauty of these poems but also the spiritual truths they contain. Literary-inclined readers and first-time poetry readers alike will relish this one-of-a-kind anthology carefully compiled to help them encounter God in fresh ways.

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“Leland Ryken has performed a great service by gathering these poems into a volume that yields counsel, challenge, and comfort to Christians of all stripes. These poems will be faithful companions to every thoughtful believer.”

Alan Jacobs, Distinguished Professor of Humanities, Honors College, Baylor University

“Leland Ryken has gifted us with a much-needed anthology that not only presents the finest devotional poetry in English, but provides incisive commentary that allows the reader to understand each poem’s various layers of meaning and to participate in its wrestling with God, faith, and the human condition.”

Louis Markos, Professor of English and Scholar in Residence, Houston Baptist University; author, From Achilles to Christ and Literature: A Student’s Guide

“Leland Ryken’s The Soul in Paraphrase is a stunning collection of timeless devotional poems that—just like the Bible—rewards the patient, careful reader. Every Christian should add this volume to their library, enjoying it slowly and savoring its riches in the daily rhythms of devotional life.”

Brett McCracken, Senior Editor, The Gospel Coalition; author, Uncomfortable

“This timeless treasury reads like a devotional on devotional poetry. With the fruits of a long career served in the love of God and of literature, Leland Ryken informs and illumines each poem’s contribution to the thoughtful Christian’s pursuit of beauty, grace, and truth. Perfect as a guide or a gift.”

Carolyn Weber, Faculty Member, Brescia University College, Western University, London, Ontario; author, Surprised by Oxford and Holy Is the Day

“I have long desired a book just like this fine collection of poems. I am constantly seeking to encourage prospective pastors, teachers, and Christians in the church to read good poetry. Leland Ryken has compiled exactly what I need: a treasury of great devotional poems that I can regularly recommend to others. He includes many of my own favorites by Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, Hopkins, and Eliot, so I was fascinated to read his valuable commentaries introducing those poems. He has also chosen less familiar works, making this a book I will return to again and again. Thank you for such an excellent work!”

Jerram Barrs, Resident Scholar, The Francis Schaeffer Institute; Professor of Christian Studies and Contemporary Culture, Covenant Theological Seminary

“Leland Ryken is a leading literary scholar of our time and in these pages offers a timeless collection that couldn’t be timelier. The Soul in Paraphrase presents masterful poems that nourish heart, mind, and soul, along with commentary that is learned, lucid, and inviting. This is a volume that will delight poetry enthusiasts and skeptics alike.”

Karen Swallow Prior, author, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books

“Some of the most profound devotional exercises—perhaps second only to the reading of Scripture—come from reading and contemplating Christian poetry. But readers today are ill-equipped to do so, knowing poetry only as either greeting-card verse or undecipherable puzzles. In this collection, Leland Ryken, the dean of Christian literary scholars, gives back to contemporary Christians their rich literary heritage. First, he selects works of the highest aesthetic and spiritual quality; and, second, he offers brief commentary that unpacks each poem’s meaning, artistry, and theological depths. In showing how poetry is a ‘trap for meditation’ (as Denis de Rougemont called it), Ryken has given us a resource that will greatly enhance our Christian devotions.”

Gene Edward Veith Jr., Professor of Literature Emeritus, Patrick Henry College

“For most modern people, poetry is hard to read and not immediately rewarding. And yet, it is precisely that difficulty and the contemplation that it requires that makes reading poetry such a valuable exercise in a world of distractions. Leland Ryken has produced a volume that will aid Christians, even those not well versed in poetry, in delighting in the rich history of devotional poetry.”

O. Alan Noble, Assistant Professor of English, Oklahoma Baptist University; author, Disruptive Witness

The Soul in Paraphrase

The Soul in Paraphrase

A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poems

Leland Ryken, editor

The Soul in Paraphrase: A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poems

© 2018 by Leland Ryken

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2018

Printed in China

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-5861-0 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-5864-1 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-5862-7 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-5863-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ryken, Leland, editor.

Title: The soul in paraphrase: a treasury of classic devotional poems / Leland Ryken, editor.

Other titles: Treasury of classic devotional poems | Devotional poems

Description: Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018005833 (print) | LCCN 2018014966 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433558627 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433558634 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433558641 (epub) | ISBN 9781433558610 (hc)

Subjects: LCSH: Spiritual life—Poetry. | Christian poetry, English. | Christian poetry, American. | Religious poetry.

Classification: LCC PN6071.S615 (ebook) | LCC PN6071.S615 S63 2018 (print) | DDC 821.008/03823–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018005833

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2024-09-19 11:23:11 AM

for

Margaret and Jeff

Contents

Editor’s Introduction

Caedmon’s Hymn (Caedmon)

The Dream of the Rood (Anonymous)

O What Their Joy and Their Glory Must Be (Abelard)

Canticle of the Sun (St. Francis)

Sunset on Calvary (Anonymous)

I Sing of a Maiden (Anonymous)

Hand in Hand We Shall Take (Anonymous)

Leave Me, O Love, Which Reachest but to Dust (Sidney)

Most Glorious Lord of Life (Spenser)

O Gracious Shepherd (Constable)

When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men’s Eyes (Shakespeare)

That Time of Year Thou Mayest in Me Behold (Shakespeare)

Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds Admit Impediments (Shakespeare)

Poor Soul, the Center of My Sinful Earth (Shakespeare)

The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strained (Shakespeare)

Yet If His Majesty (Anonymous)

Thou Hast Made Me, and Shall Thy Work Decay? (Donne)

As Due by Many Titles I Resign (Donne)

Oh My Black Soul (Donne)

This Is My Play’s Last Scene (Donne)

At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners (Donne)

Death, Be Not Proud (Donne)

Spit in My Face, You Jews (Donne)

Batter My Heart (Donne)

Wilt Thou Love God as He Thee? (Donne)

A Hymn on the Nativity of My Savior (Jonson)

Aaron (Herbert)

Redemption (Herbert)

Prayer (Herbert)

Virtue (Herbert)

The Pulley (Herbert)

The Agony (Herbert)

Love (Herbert)

The Twenty-Third Psalm (Herbert)

The Elixir (Herbert)

Easter (Herbert)

The Collar (Herbert)

Sunday (Herbert)

He Bore Our Griefs (Revius)

His Savior’s Words, Going to the Cross (Herrick)

His Litany to the Holy Spirit (Herrick)

On Time (Milton)

How Soon Hath Time (Milton)

Lady That in the Prime of Earliest Youth (Milton)

When Faith and Love (Milton)

Avenge, O Lord, Thy Slaughtered Saints (Milton)

When I Consider How My Light Is Spent (Milton)

Methought I Saw My Late Espouséd Saint (Milton)

Greatly Instructed I Shall Hence Depart (Milton)

Verses upon the Burning of Our House (Bradstreet)

Poverty (Traherne)

Peace (Vaughan)

Easter Hymn (Vaughan)

The Dawning (Vaughan)

The Waterfall (Vaughan)

They Are All Gone into the World of Light (Vaughan)

When in Mid-Air, the Golden Trump Shall Sound (Dryden)

Veni, Creator Spiritus [“Come, Creator Spirit”] (Dryden)

The Spacious Firmament on High (Addison)

When Rising from the Bed of Death (Addison)

The Dying Christian to His Soul (Pope)

Huswifery (Taylor)

Infinity, When All Things It Beheld (Taylor)

The Resignation (Chatterton)

The Lamb (Blake)

And Did Those Feet (Blake)

The Destruction of Sennacherib (Byron)

Lines Written in Early Spring (Wordsworth)

Earth Has Not Anything to Show More Fair (Wordsworth)

To a Waterfowl (Bryant)

The Snow-Storm (Emerson)

Strong Son of God, Immortal Love (Tennyson)

Crossing the Bar (Tennyson)

In the Bleak Midwinter (Rossetti)

Good Friday (Rossetti)

Up-Hill (Rossetti)

Pied Beauty (Hopkins)

Spring (Hopkins)

The Windhover (Hopkins)

God’s Grandeur (Hopkins)

O World Invisible, We View Thee (Thompson)

A Prayer in Spring (Frost)

Journey of the Magi (Eliot)

Two Poems on Death and Immortality (Dickinson)

Nature as God’s Revelation (Lanier and Coleridge)

Sunday Worship (Smart and Coleridge)

Christmas Day (Anonymous and Milton)

Nature as a Religious Experience (Wordsworth)

The Consolations of Providence (Milton and Shakespeare)

Certainty of Faith (Brontë and Dickinson)

Our Only Secure Home (Anonymous)

Biographical Notes

Sources and Acknowledgments

Scripture Index

Person Index

Editor’s Introduction

This book is an anthology of the best devotional poetry in English. It begins with the oldest surviving poem in the English language and ends with the modern era. The structure of the book is chronological, but this is a convenience of organization only. Christian poetry is timeless and universal. What the poems in this anthology share with each other is more important than traits arising from when they were written, giving us a new slant on the apostle Paul’s formula of “the faith that was once for all delivered” (Jude 3).

No single definition can encompass the genre of devotional poetry, so in the next several paragraphs I will describe it from complementary angles. The first thing to note is that devotional poetry is not in any sense to be equated with so-called inspirational verse of the type that appears on greeting cards. The more I surveyed existing anthologies of “Christian verse” (or a variant), the more disillusioned I became. Most of the material is versified prose. The content is thin and confined, producing what I call “bits and pieces” poetry. The poems in this anthology are substantial in the ways I am about to define. In order to be included in this anthology, poems needed to lend themselves to the kind of literary analysis that I conduct as a professor of literature and writer of literary criticism. If all that a poem lends itself to is mere reading as opposed to analysis and explication, it needs to be judged to be of limited substance.

Most devotional poetry takes specifically spiritual experience for its subject matter, though I will shortly qualify that. While Christian poets are free to take all of life as their subject—and in fact it is highly desirable that as a group they do so—devotional poetry tends to take specifically religious life as its subject. Examples are the person and work of God, conviction and confession of sin, forgiveness, worship of God, and the church calendar with events like Christmas and Easter.

Devotional poetry is also definable by its effect on a reader. If a poem prompts us to think about God and spiritual truth, if it deepens our spiritual insight and experience, and if it awakens a greater love of God and desire to be like him, it has served a devotional purpose. Devotional poetry fixes our thoughts on the spiritual life and inspires us toward excellence in it. To define devotional poetry by its effect is a subjective definition, balancing a more objective definition based on the content of a poem.

Defining devotional poetry by its effect opens the door to a broader field of candidates. Inclusion now depends on how a reader assimilates a poem. If a given reader experiences a poem as defined in the preceding paragraph, it fits the category of devotional poetry for that reader.

We can place this line of thought into the following paradigm for all of literature. Literature as a whole divides itself into three groups, viewed as existing on a continuum.

On one end of the continuum we find the literature of Christian belief, and on the other end the literature of unbelief. Between these stands a category that can be called the literature of common experience or the literature of clarification (meaning that its chief feature is that it clarifies life). The literature of common experience does not signal a specifically Christian identity but is congruent with Christianity (if it were not, it would belong to the literature of unbelief). A work in this neutral category may have even been written by a Christian.

When Christian readers assimilate such literature in terms of who they are as Christians, the literature can become devotional. We might think of the transaction in terms of imposing a fuller Christian understanding on material that stopped short of such an understanding. Another formula by which to understand the situation is this: if as Christian readers we cannot read X [a specific work belonging to the category of common experience and humanity] without thinking of Y [an aspect of the Christian life], the work has yielded a Christian reading experience.

In this anthology I have included several poems that belong to the category of the poetry of common experience or clarification. I will use my accompanying commentary to show how these poems can be read devotionally. My rationale for including them is twofold: (1) they are too good to bypass in an anthology of my favorite devotional poems, and (2) I want to plant a seed in my readers that can lead them to nudge ideationally neutral literature into their repertoire of Christian reading.

Devotional poems are lyric poems. Lyric poems, in turn, are either (a) meditative and reflective in nature, or (b) emotional and affective. In the first instance, the poet shares more and more of his or her thought process as the poem unfolds. In an affective lyric, we learn more and more about the poet’s feelings.

Two English poets of towering stature have provided an additional helpful way of understanding this. John Milton, who turned from a possible ministerial career to his life’s calling as a poet when his Puritan convictions prevented him from entering the Anglican Church, was so convinced of the worthiness of poetry that he claimed that the poet’s abilities “are of power beside [equal to] the office of a pulpit” to produce good in people and societies. One of these effects, according to Milton, was that poetry can “set the affections [the old word for emotions] in right tune.”

To this we can add a similar viewpoint expressed by the nineteenth-century poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth was of the opinion that “a great poem ought to . . . rectify men’s feeling, to give them new compositions of feeling.” If we extend this principle to a reflective lyric, we can say that poetry can rectify our thinking as well as our feeling.

Applied to the poems that comprise this anthology, we can read the poems as setting our thoughts and feelings in right tune, and also some of the time correcting them. The same is true when we read the Psalms, and this is a good place to remind ourselves that devotional poetry of the type that appears in this anthology finds its prototype in the Bible.

The poets who composed the poems in this anthology are ministering spirits to us, serving us in ways that they could never have imagined. Their poems have two aspects—form and content. Both are important. Because the content is what expresses the specifically devotional aspect of the poems, it would be possible to overlook the artistry and verbal beauty of their poems.

To overlook the artistry would be a great mistake, for at least three reasons. First, there is no content without the form in which it is expressed, so it is ultimately impossible to disregard the poetic form. Second, it is true of any discourse that beauty and skill of expression increase the impact of what is said, so we need to honor that beauty and skill. Third, beauty matters to God and to poets as they ply their trade as creators made in God’s image. For that reason, we need to ensure that beauty also matters to us as readers. The artistic dimension of the poems in this anthology is an important part of the poems’ ability to set our thoughts and feelings in right tune, and I have accordingly paid this artistry its due in my explications of the poems.

I am reminded in this regard of a comment that a literary scholar made about Milton’s funeral poem entitled “Lycidas,” written on the occasion of the death by drowning of a fellow college student. The critic offered the opinion that the beauty of the poem actually consoles, in a spiritual as well as artistic sense. That expresses exactly how I have always experienced the poem. Milton himself said that one of the effects of Christian poetry is that it sets the emotions in right tune, and the verbal beauty and broader artistic effects of a poem are among the qualities that enable that to happen.

A poem that requires more pondering and analysis from us than a poem that requires less is a poem that yields more. In saying that, I am not endorsing obscure poetry but rather poetry that possesses a certain degree of complexity and a multi-layered quality. The more we need to wrestle with a poem’s language, structure, and turns of phrase, the more profundity of meaning and richness of experience it will reveal. A perfect example is the four-line medieval poem “Sunset on Calvary”. I am sure that some of my readers will be surprised by the quantity of analysis I provide for only four lines, but this is a tribute to (a) how much there is in the poem and (b) how much spiritual devotion is available to us if we unpack the riches.

The main title of this anthology, The Soul in Paraphrase, is taken from a poem by George Herbert. In its original context, this epithet is applied to prayer, but it is equally accurate as a description of devotional poetry. To paraphrase something means to put it into our own words. That is what the poets represented in this anthology have done: they have put the spiritual motions of their soul into their own words. In doing so, they have become our representatives, saying what we too want said, only saying it better.

I have taken the liberty of modernizing spelling, capitalizing, and punctuation in all instances where I thought that not doing so would be an obstacle to my readers. Much poetry from bygone centuries was originally published with arbitrary indentations of lines. Usually I have regarded this as an unnecessary impediment to my readers (as it is to me), so I have generally started all lines flush with the left margin.

I have divided my commentary on the poems into two units. I have labeled one of them “notes on selected words.” Much of my “close reading” of the poems appears in this unit, which should be regarded as essential rather than optional. Composing this unit has greatly enlarged my understanding of the poems, and I can see belatedly how much I have missed during the past half century by not paying closer attention to every word in a poem. The second unit of analysis is simply “commentary,” which I slanted in two directions—general enhancement of a reader’s experience of the artistry of a given poem and notes on the specifically devotional aspect of a poem.

The last nine entries in this anthology are pairs of poems on a common theme. These poems are too brief to be an entry by themselves, but they form a perfect combination for devotional thought when paired together.

The subtitle of this anthology calls the collected poems a treasure. That is what they are. They are one of God’s greatest gifts to the human race, waiting to be cherished by Christians.

Caedmon’s Hymn

Caedmon (seventh century)

Now we must praise the Keeper of Heaven’s Kingdom,

The might of the Maker 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,

The earth for men, the Lord Almighty.

—

Notes on selected words.Keeper: guardian or ruler. Might: power. The Maker: could also be translated “the Measurer,” with architectural overtones. Wisdom: “mind-plans” in the original Old English, with the implication of thoughtful purpose and careful planning. The Glory-Father: God of glory. Heaven [line 6]: the sky. Middle-earth: standard term for earth in the Old and Middle English periods.

Commentary. This poem (originally written in Old English and here translated by Leland Ryken) is the oldest surviving poem in the English language. The story of its origin is as famous as the poem. The story was recorded by the Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (c. 730). Caedmon was an illiterate farmhand residing at Whitby Abbey in northeast England. Whenever the harp was passed around the dining hall at feasts so residents of the abbey could take turns singing, Caedmon found an excuse to leave the meal early. On one of these occasions, Caedmon went to the barn and fell asleep. In a dream, he heard someone telling him to sing something. Caedmon replied that he did not know how to sing. “Sing about creation,” the visitor replied. Thereupon Caedmon sang the song known as “Caedmon’s Hymn.” The new poetic gift never left Caedmon. English poetry thus began with a miracle of the word.

“Caedmon’s Hymn” is an example of the artistic category that we can call “the simple as a form of beauty.” Only nine lines long, the poem follows the biblical genre known as the psalm of praise. The content of the praise comes straight from the creation story in Genesis 1. It is an abbreviated account of that story, taking a wide-angle view of God’s first creating the entire world and then the earth specifically as a provision for people.

The poem does three things that praise psalms typically do: (1) it begins with a formal call to praise God (the first stanza); (2) it provides a list or catalog of God’s praiseworthy acts; and (3) it rounds off the praise with a note of closure in the last line. This simplicity is played off against two pleasing forms of stylistic formality and artistry. First, Caedmon loaded his poem with phrases and clauses that name the same phenomena with different words, a technique influenced by the biblical verse form of parallelism. Second, our spirit is elevated by exalted titles for God, a technique known as epithets. For example, the first epithet in the poem is the Keeper of Heaven’s Kingdom.

Structurally the poem falls into complementary halves, as signaled by the stanzaic arrangement. The first stanza praises God’s sovereignty in creating the entire cosmos, and the epithets for God accordingly stress his transcendence. The second stanza praises God’s creative acts on behalf of humankind, as the cosmic imagery of the first stanza gives way to a vocabulary of earth and people.

The Dream of the Rood

Anonymous (possibly eighth century)

Listen, I will tell of the best of visions,

which came to me in the middle of the night. . . .

Lying there a long while,

in sorrow I beheld the Savior’s tree,

until I heard it utter a sound;

the best of wood began to speak these words:

[The personified cross tells the story of the crucifixion:]

It was long ago—I still remember it—

that I was cut down from the edge of the forest,

ripped up by my roots. Strong enemies seized me there,

made me their spectacle, forced me to bear criminals. . . .

I was raised as a cross; I lifted up a mighty King,

the Lord of heaven; I did not dare to bend.

They pierced me with dark nails; I bear the scars,

the open wounds of hatred. . . .

They mocked us both together. I was drenched with blood

that flowed from that man’s side after he had sent forth his spirit. . . .

[The personified cross describes its present glory in the world:]

Now the time has come

when men will honor me far and wide

over the earth and all this glorious creation,

and pray to this beacon. On me the Son of God

suffered for a while. I am therefore glorious now,

and rise under the heavens, able to heal

each one of those who will reverence me. . . .

[The cross entrusts the speaker/dreamer with a task:]

Now I command you, my beloved man,

that you reveal this vision to men;

tell them in word that it is the tree of glory

on which almighty God suffered

for mankind’s many sins

and Adam’s ancient deeds.

Death he tasted there, yet God rose again

by his great might to help mankind.

He ascended into heaven. He will come again

to this middle-earth to seek mankind

on doomsday. . . .

[The speaker’s testimony to the power of the cross:]

Then I prayed to the cross with a happy heart

and great zeal, where I was alone

with little company. My spirit was inspired

for the journey forward. . . .

It is now my life’s hope

that I might seek the tree of victory

alone more than all men,

to honor it well. My desire for that

is much in my mind, and my hope of protection

is fixed on the cross. . . .

May the Lord be my friend,

he who here on earth suffered

on the hanging-tree for the sins of man.

He ransomed us and gave us life,

a heavenly home. . . .

The Son was victorious in that venture,

mighty and successful, when he came with a multitude,

a great host of souls, into God’s kingdom,

the one Ruler almighty, to the joy of angels

and all the saints already in heaven,

dwelling in glory, when their Ruler,

almighty God, came to his rightful homeland.

—

Notes on selected words.Rood: cross. The best of wood: an epithet denoting the cross. My beloved man: the speaker in the poem; the one who received the vision that the poem records. Adam’s ancient deeds: original sin; the disobedience in the garden and its effects in the world. Middle-earth: medieval designation for the earth. Doomsday: the judgment day, or last day.

Commentary. This poem was originally written in Old English and is here translated by Leland Ryken. The poem as printed here is excerpted from a longer poem.

The devotional potential of this poem lies in its theme, namely, the power of the cross. Everything in the poem relates to that. The poem draws upon a favorite genre of the Middle Ages known as the dream vision. This genre is prominent in the Bible and in subsequent literary history (with John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress being a famous example). In this genre, a speaker or narrator pictures himself as receiving a vision. This is only the external framework; the content of the imagined vision is what the poem is actually about. The opening lines of this poem introduce this visionary framework, as the speaker announces to us that he heard the cross of Christ speak to him in a dream.

After this opening, the poem unfolds in four movements, each one represented briefly in the excerpted version above. First the cross describes the circumstances of Christ’s crucifixion; the devotional aspect is that we are led to ponder the physical suffering and torture of Christ’s crucifixion. Next the cross asserts that glory has come to it because of the victory that Jesus achieved on the cross. Third, the cross charges the speaker/dreamer with the task of testifying about the cross in the world by declaring the gospel to humankind. The poem then reaches its climax in the concluding section, where the speaker testifies to what the cross means to him in his journey of life. At the very end of this section, the poem draws upon a theological tradition known as Christus Victor (Christ triumphant), ending the poem on a note of celebration and triumph.

As we progress through these phases, we are led to ponder the cross of Christ from various angles, including the horror and agony of what Christ endured on the cross and the glory that the cross has embodied throughout history because of what Christ achieved by his death on it. The poem also celebrates the power of the cross to save and give direction to one’s life. The final note is doxological, as the speaker celebrates the victorious Christ of the cross.

O What Their Joy and Their Glory Must Be

Peter Abelard (1079–1142)

O what their joy and their glory must be,

Those endless Sabbaths the blesséd 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 blesséd 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 blesséd 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.

—

Notes on selected words.All that they feel could as fully declare: the wish is that the blessed saints in heaven could declare their bliss in words as fully as they feel it. Come short of: fall short of. Yearn: long. Babylon: this fallen earthly order of things; the terminology comes from the book of Revelation. Strand: shore.

Commentary.This poem was composed in twelfth-century French; the translation by which the English-speaking world knows it was produced by John Mason Neale, a famed nineteenth-century English translator of hymns.

It is doubtless a surprising claim that a major part of a poem’s beauty and power can reside in its meter, but occasionally the claim is accurate, as it is here. The usual function of regular meter in a poem is to provide a smooth flow for the words in a poem—to keep the language and content moving onward in regular rhythm. This is what is called the music of poetry. Ordinarily smooth meter is like the air we breathe—essential to the life of a poem but itself unnoticed unless we are abruptly or unpleasantly made aware of an irregular and staccato effect.

Sometimes, however, we are fully aware of the presence of meter as a leading source of our pleasure. The English translation of Abelard’s famous poem about heaven sweeps us along with its unusual meter. The customary metrical form for English poetry is called “iambic,” and it consists of two-syllable feet (or units) in which an unaccented syllable is followed by an accented one (for example: re-mark). However, the poem printed above consists primarily of anapestic feet—three-syllable units comprised of two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable (for example: God shall be). The effect is to sweep us along at an accelerated pace. Oral reading of the poem will immediately confirm this effect.

The subject of the poem is the joys of heaven—as realized by saints who are already there and anticipated by those who are still in their earthly journey to heaven. The chief strategy in the poem is to awaken our longing for heaven. While the metrical pace of the poem is the chief element in the poem, the imagery plays its part as well. There is a thread of ecstatic vocabulary, with words such as joy, glory, peace, throne, all, and hearts raised on high. The motif of the endlessness of heavenly joys permeates the poem. Evocative images of transcendence fire our imaginations and longings for heaven too: Sabbath, Jerusalem, Zion. Other deft touches will reveal themselves to anyone who looks at the poem carefully.

C. S. Lewis claimed regarding the term “classic” that once we have developed a taste for it, no other work comes close to being an adequate substitute. This poem surely meets that criterion and is a classic devotional poem.

Canticle of the Sun

St. Francis of Assisi (1184–1226)

Most high, all-powerful, all good, Lord!

All praise is yours, all glory, all honor,

And all blessing.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong.

No mortal lips are worthy

To pronounce your name.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,

And first my lord Brother Sun,

Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.

How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!

Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;

In the heavens you have made them, bright

And precious and fair.

All praise be yours, My Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,

And fair and stormy, all the weather’s moods,

By which you cherish all that you have made.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,

So useful, lowly, precious and pure.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,

Through whom you brighten up the night. 

How beautiful is he, how gay! Full of power and strength.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother,

Who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces

Various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through those who grant pardon

For love of you; through those who endure

Sickness and trial.

Happy those who endure in peace,

By you, Most High, they will be crowned.

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death,

From whose embrace no mortal can escape.

Woe to those who die in mortal sin!

Happy those She finds doing your will!

The second death can do no harm to them.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks,

And serve him with great humility.

—

Notes on selected words.Gay: brilliant in color. Mortal sin: in Catholic theology, a sin that is so serious that it leads to eternal damnation if a person is not absolved of it before death.

Commentary. This version of this medieval poem has been translated by Benen Fahy. The poem is also known by the title “Canticle of the Creatures.” It is one of the first works of literature written in the Italian language. St. Francis’s communion with the creatures of nature is legendary, and this poem bears the imprint of the poet’s everyday life in nature. St. Francis became blind in his early forties (as did English poet John Milton).

This poem has been important through the centuries, especially in musical versions. A familiar paraphrased version of this poem is the hymn “All Creatures of Our Lord and King” (composed by William H. Draper for a children’s festival in Leeds, England, and published in the Public School Hymn Book in 1919). Elizabeth Goudge’s poem “Spring Song” also borrows heavily from the motifs in Francis of Assisi’s poem. Finally, in this vein of the dependence of texts upon texts, the dominant element in the format of the poem, a catalog of various elements of nature that are linked to the praise of God, can be found in Psalm 148.

The entire poem is a dramatic address to God, making it a prayer. The genre of the poem is a psalm of praise to God, as the poet consistently ascribes praise to God. Through most of the poem, God is praised for the familiar features of the creation that make up our daily lives in the physical world. The most memorable motif in the enterprise is surely the domestication of natural forces, so that the sun becomes our brother, the moon and stars our sister, and so forth. Just as Psalm 148 moves from the natural world to the human sphere and God’s redemption of people as it nears its end, this poem makes that same shift in the last two stanzas.

Sunset on Calvary

Anonymous (date unknown)

Now goes the sun under wood;

I rue, Mary, thy fair face.

Now goes the sun under tree;

I rue, Mary, thy son and thee.

—

Notes on selected words.Sun: a pun, as both sun and son are in view. Wood: the cross. Rue: pity. Fair: pale or white, and perhaps also beautiful. Tree: the cross.

Commentary. “Sunset on Calvary” was originally composed in Middle English and is here translated by Leland Ryken.

This poem is a classic example of two cherished qualities of much poetry: (1) the simple as a form of beauty, and (2) a hidden complexity that is initially concealed by a surface simplicity. The simplicity is what we first absorb: a four-line poem; in the original Middle English possessing two rhyming couplets (wode and rode [face], tree and thee; patterns of repetition in lines 1 and 3, and 2 and 4. The religious sentiment too is simple and moving, as the speaker expresses his pity for the mother of Jesus as she witness the crucifixion of her son, and for Jesus