Stir Me!

Stir me, oh, stir me, Lord, I care not how,

But stir my heart in passion for the world,

Stir me to give, to go, but most to pray;

Stir till the blood-red banner be unfurled

O'er lands that still in heathen darkness lie,

O'er deserts where no cross is lifted high.

Stir me, oh, stir me, Lord, till all my heart

Is filled with strong compassion for these-souls;

Till Thy compelling word drives me to pray;

Till Thy constraining love reach to the poles

Far north and south, in burning deep desire,

Till east and west are caught in love's great fire.

Stir me, oh, stir me, Lord, till prayer is pain,

Till prayer is joy, till prayer turns into praise;

Stir me, till heart and will and mind, yea, all

Is wholly Thine to use through all the days.

Stir, till I learn to pray exceedingly;

Stir, till I learn to wait expectantly.

Stir me, oh, stir me, Lord, Thy heart was stirred

By love's intensest fire, till Thou didst give

Thine only Son, Thy best beloved One,

E'en to the dreadful cross, that I might live.

Stir me to give myself so back to Thee,

That Thou canst give Thyself again through me.

Stir me, oh, stir me, Lord, for I can see

Thy glorious triumph-day begin to break;

The dawn already gilds the eastern sky;

Oh, Church of Christ, arise, awake, awake.

Oh! stir us, Lord, as heralds of that day.

For night is past, the King is on His way.

~Bessie Porter Head

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In the winter

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.

Those lines are from Christina Rossetti’s poem “In the Bleak Midwinter.” They’re so evocative of winter with its barrenness, its frozen landscape. I get cold quickly, so maybe it’s just me, but winter’s a hard time of year for me. I long for warmth and greenness and beauty: all the things that winter doesn’t have.

In short, I wish I were anywhere but here, in any time but this one.

And that’s how Rossetti starts her poem: with the earth hard as iron, water like a stone. It’s not where she ends, though. She goes on to say:

Our God, heaven cannot hold him,
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign;
In the bleak midwinter
A stable place sufficed
The Lord God incarnate,
Jesus Christ.

Into the midst of all of this barrenness, Christ came. Now, I know that the actual date of Christ’s birth is debated, but let’s lay aside that debate for the moment. Because the image of Christ coming into the midst of a world that is winter is true. He came and made all things full of life.

It’s kind of humbling, isn’t it? Here I am, complaining about my cold hands, and there’s Christ, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, coming down and being born as a human, to save us all. Not just us, but all of creation. How awe-some is that?

So, maybe in this cold season I should stop complaining. Maybe I should start trying to make just a tiny bit of Christ’s warmth in this frozen world. Maybe I should do what Rossetti says: “Give my heart.”

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Poppies

The Dead

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night

Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

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Empty or full?

Sometimes I feel empty. How could I possibly sit here and write something moving? How could I hope to teach what I don’t know? The questions just keep piling up until I feel like I have nothing, like I am nothing.

But then I remember one of my favorite poems (I will admit that I have a great many). It’s called “A Better Resurrection” and it was written by a Victorian woman named Christina Rossetti.

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone

Is numbed too much for hopes or fears;

Look right, look left, I dwell alone;

I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief

No everlasting hills I see;

My life is in the falling leaf:

O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,

My harvest dwindled to a husk;

Truly my life is void and brief

And tedious in the barren dusk;

My life is like a frozen thing,

No bud nor greenness can I see:

Yet rise it shall—the sap of Spring;

O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,

A broken bowl that cannot hold

One drop of water for my soul

Or cordial in the searching cold;

Cast in the fire the perished thing,

Melt and remold it, till it be

A royal cup for Him my King:

O Jesus, drink of me.

We will feel empty. We will feel “dimmed with grief.” We live in a fallen world. But we also have the greatest gift we could possibly be given: the love of God and the promise of his mercy and healing.

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How to read a poem, part 2

You can read the first part [HERE].

In the last post I talked about how to read a poem, using "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins as an example. In this post I'm going to share some of what I see in "God's Grandeur."

This poem is a sonnet--to be more specific, a Petrarchan sonnet. Therefore it has 14 lines in the following rhyme pattern (or rhyme scheme):
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
A

C
D
C
D
C
D

I divided into two sections. The first contains two thoughts, the second one.

Let's look at the first thought of the first section (this is starting to sound a little like Charades, isn't it?):

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?

* Until the last line, all of the statements are positive ("is charged," "will flame out," "gathers to a greatness")
* The positive statements are all attributes of the grandeur of God.
* The first negative statement is introduced with men.
* The "now" in the last sentence places the poem in the present
* Three major subjects of the poem are introduced: the world, God, and men

Let's move on to the second thought of the first section:

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.

* This thought marks a change from most of the first thought but continues from the last sentence
* Hopkins is still describing the present day
* The statements are positive but the connotations are negative ("bleared," "smeared," "smudge")
* Here man is out of touch with nature ("nor can foot feel, being shod") and in fact has imposed himself on the world.

Now comes a very important part: a break. You can see it on the page. There's a space before the next thought. This pattern follows the form of Petrarchan sonnets.

Then comes the second section:

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.

* Here the attitude of the poem shifts dramatically. Before everything was "bleared" and "smeared"--and they still are. But there is also "the dearest freshness deep down things"
* The renewal of the world is constant and ever present. This renewal is only possible with God, via the work of the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost), which is here compared to a mother hen brooding over her chicks.

This analysis is far from exhaustive, but I'm not really trying to be exhaustive. I'm trying to show you that if you don't let yourself be discouraged and keep reading attentively, you can figure out what a poem is trying to say without as much difficulty as you might think!

Do you have any other thoughts? Leave them in the comments!

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How to read a poem, part 1

I’ve noticed that a fair number of my friends, even people who enjoy reading a lot, tend to shy away from poetry. “Oh no,” they say, “it’s too difficult. I don’t like reading it very much.” I, on the other hand, enjoy reading poetry quite a bit. And since I’m an English major I read it often. So I thought I’d give a few tips on reading poetry. Because it’s really not as scary as it sounds.

1. Go [HERE] and print off the poem. Now find a pen or pencil and sit down somewhere quiet with a table or book to write on.

2. Read the whole poem out loud. I know this may sound a little funny, but trust me. It makes a difference.*

3. Now, in the nice white space at the bottom of your paper write down anything you noticed. Don’t read any further until you’ve done that.

Okay. Here are a few things I noticed:
a) the ‘g’ sound is repeated quite a bit throughout the poem
b) there’s a rhythmical, marching feel, especially in the first stanza [if you don’t know what a stanza is, don’t worry—we’ll get to that in a minute]

4. Now take your pen or pencil. We’re going to look at the form of the poem—the way it’s been set up. I happen to already know that this is in a form called a Petrarchan sonnet. But even if you don’t know that, we can figure some things out.

At the end of the first line, put a big ‘A.’ Now look at the next line. Does it rhyme with the first? No, it ends with ‘foil.’ So put a big ‘B’ at the end of the second line. Now look at the third line. Does it rhyme with either of the two so far? Yes! It rhymes with the second line. So put a big ‘B’ at the end of that line as well. Keep going through the poem, putting a new letter whenever a new rhyme appears.

After you’re done, you should end up with these letters:
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
A

C
D
C
D
C
D

Can you draw any conclusions from them?

Here’s what I thought of:
a) the poem is divided into two sections—these are called ‘stanzas’ †
b) in the first section, the same rhyme pattern‡ is repeated twice
So my conclusion is that the two sections will have different thoughts in them—otherwise why would they be divided? And in the first section, there will be two thoughts again, but they will be related (because they have the same rhyme pattern).

5. Now, read the first line again. Just the first line. Take your pen or pencil and write down any thoughts you have. Circle words if you think they’re interesting. Do the same thing for all fourteen lines. If you need to look something up in the dictionary, you can. If you want to read it out loud again, you can do that too. If you think two things are connected, draw a line between them. Right across the beginning of the page.

6. Look at all of your notes. Some of them might not be important. That’s okay. Usually I have two or three little rabbit trails that are interesting but don’t really have anything to do with what I end up thinking the poem is really trying to say.

Now comes the part that might be a little harder. Looking at your notes and at the poem, try to figure out what you think the poem is saying. It doesn’t have to be anything really profound. It can just be a paraphrase of the words in each section. That’s a hint there—remember that the poem is written in sections. There are two complete thoughts in the first large section and one complete thought in the second. Try to think of them as a sentence each (in this poem they happen to be a sentence each, which makes things easier).

Another tip: try to find the key words. What seems to be important here? I came up with a few—nature, God, man, the world. Can you think of any more?

Tip 3: a poem isn’t necessarily going to say exactly the same thing the whole way through. In fact, usually the poet changes his or her mind part of the way through. So if one section seems to say one thing and another section seems to say another, don’t be frustrated. That’s probably part of the poem.

I’m going to stop here for this week. Next week I’ll tell you what I think the poem is trying to say. Please, leave your ideas in the comment section! And if you have any questions, you can leave those in the comments as well. I’ll try to answer them either there or in my next post.

* Most poetry is designed to be read out loud and therefore you miss things if you don’t. This is less true for certain poems and forms of poetry but in general it is a good principle.
† There, wasn’t that easy?
‡ If you wanted to be fancy about it, you could use the technical term and call it a 'rhyme scheme.'

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A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

- Robert Frost, 1915

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Closer

Each day is one day
closer to the end
And each day is one day
closer to the beginning

Darkness eases, creeps slowly,
like the beginning of an early dawn
Spring prying winter's fingers
away from the frame of the world

One less day of cold,
snow, grey, darkness.
One day closer to warm,
life, sunshine, color.

And I hold my breath and then let it out,
trying to control my impatience
One minute, one hour, one day closer
to both an end and a beautiful beginning

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Hope

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me

- Emily Dickinson

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A poem

God's Grandeur

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 bears 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 from the black west went,
Oh, morning at the brown brink eastwards springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast, and with, ah, bright wings.

Gerard Manley Hopkins



[Incidentally, this is a lovely example of a Petrarchan sonnet.]

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Buttercup Days

I think a good portion of my summer reading is going to be spent in poetry and stories about Christopher Robin and Winnie-the-Pooh. The original stuff by A.A. Milne, of course. And recently, while photographing buttercups in the backyward, I thought of a little girl named Anne and Buttercups...

Buttercup Days
Where is Anne?
Head above the buttercups,
Walking by the stream,
Down among the buttercups.
Where is Anne?
Walking with her man,
Lost in a dream,
Lost among the buttercups.

What has she got in that little brown head?
Wonderful thoughts which can never be said.
What has she got in that firm little fist of hers?
Somebody’s thumb, and it feels like Christopher’s

Where is Anne?
Close to her man.
Brown head, gold head,
In and out the buttercups.
- A.A. Milne, "Now We Are Six"

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