Clik here to view.
And now, a poem from Wendell Berry
A man with some authentic worries And many vain and silly ones, I am well-schooled in sleeplessness; I know it from the inside out. I breathe, and I know what’s at stake. But still sometimes I’m sane...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sons of Bethlehem
First draft of a song lyric for the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Sort of a 2015 version of the Coventry Carol, I guess. I don’t have a tune for it yet, but this tune (Jim Moray’s take on a traditional...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Those who have learned to love…’
Whatever happens, those who have learned to love one another have made their way into the lasting world and will not leave, whatever happens. – Wendell Berry, This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘We follow the dead to their graves…’
This is the second in a series of posts of poems by one of my favourite authors, Wendell Berry. 1. We follow the dead to their graves, and our long love follows on beyond, crying to them, not “Come...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Surely it will be for this…’
The third in a series of poems by the great Wendell Berry, from his collection ‘This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems’. Surely it will be for this: the redbud pink, the wild plum white, yellow...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘The question before me, now…’
This – another little gem by Wendell Berry – seems like a good poem for my 58th new year’s day. The question before me, now that I am old, is not how to be dead, which I know from enough practice, but...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘We come at last to the dark…’
The fifth in a series of poems by the great Wendell Berry, from his collection ‘This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems’. We come at last to the dark and enter in. We are given bodies newly made out...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’, by John Clare
‘The Shepherd’s Calendar’ is a set of pastoral poems from the early 1800s (it was first published in 1824) written by John Clare, a native of Helpston, near Peterborough in the English East Midlands....
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Portable Dante
My first time reading Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’ (earlier this year) was in Mark Musa’s three-volume edition (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise), with exhaustive notes and introductory material. I enjoyed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Else But Through a Broken Heart…
And every human heart that breaks, In prison cell or yard, Is as that broken box that gave Its treasure to the Lord. And filled the unclean leper’s house With the scent of costliest nard. Ah! Happy...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Smite a Rock
Good Friday Christina Rossetti Am I a stone, and not a sheep, That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy cross, To number drop by drop Thy blood’s slow loss, And yet not weep? Not so those women loved Who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘A Christmas Ghost-Story’
South of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies – your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: ‘I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
William Shakespeare, April 1564 – April 23rd 1616
Thank you, Will. You created some of the most unforgettable characters ever to grace a stage. You taught us that the English language could sing to rival any other, and you invented more than 1700...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘I’ll Shelter at Your Side’ (on Psalm 57)
O Lord, have mercy on me In you O God I hide Beneath the shadow of your wings I’ll shelter at your side To God I cry aloud His plan for me is good He sends from heaven and rescues me from those who...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Lord Will Happiness Divine
The Lord will happiness divine On contrite hearts bestow; Then tell me, gracious God, is mine A contrite heart or no? I hear, but seem to hear in vain, Insensible as steel; If aught is felt, ’tis only...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘To Care for What We Know…’ (a poem by Wendell Berry)
To care for what we know requires care for what we don’t, the world’s lives dark in the soil, dark in the dark. Forbearance is the first care we give to what we do not know. We live by lives we don’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
John Donne, ‘Nativity’ (1610)
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb, Now leaves His well-belov’d imprisonment, There He hath made Himself to His intent Weak enough, now into the world to come; But O, for thee, for Him, hath the inn...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘The World’, by Henry Vaughan (1621-1695)
I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv’n by the spheres Like a vast shadow...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Beauty of Death
I wrote a new song this month. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks. I’ll post a video before too long. Let me know in the comments if you get the Henry Vaughan connection. The Beauty of Death ©...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Lost Pyx: a Mediaeval Legend
(Nobody can persuade me that Thomas Hardy wasn’t a lover of traditional folk songs; not when he wrote poems like this one!) Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand Attests to a...
View Article