poem of the week
POTW: Lucy Shaw’s Mary’s Song
Mary’s Song by Lucy Shaw Blue homespun and the bend of my breast keep warm this small hot naked star fallen to my arms. (Rest… you who have had so far to come.) Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps whose eyelids have not …
POTW: Sin and Love: Ways of Knowing and the Iconic Imagination
THE AGONY George Herbert (1593-1633) Philosophers have measured mountains, Fathomed the depths of seas, of states, and kings, Walked with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains: But there are two vast, spacious things, The which to measure it doth more behove: Yet few there are that sound them; Sin and Love. Who would know …
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POTW: Donald Davidson’s “Sanctuary”
SANCTUARY by Donald Davidson You must remember this when I am gone, And tell your sons — for you will have tall sons. And times will come when answers will not wait. Remember this: if ever defeat is black Upon your eyelids, go to the wilderness In the dread last of trouble, for your foe …
Poem of the Week: The Shield of Achilles
The Shield of Achilles by WH Auden She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of …
POTW: The Odyssey – On Dangerous Women & Their Looms
Classics Christian Classical education is “logo-centric” (among other things) – driven by language, in love with words, books, literature, truth; both logos and the Logos. Living in a time of confused and devalued language, then, proves difficult for many of us. To use one example, the title of “classic” can now apply to any book …
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POTW: What Hurts, Teaches – Reflections on a Coleridge Poem
Quae Nocent Docent [in Christ’s Hospital book] O! mihi praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos! (1789) Oh! might my ill-past hours return again! No more, as then, should Sloth around me throw Her soul-enslaving, leaden chain! No more the precious time would I employ In giddy revels, or in thoughtless joy, A present joy producing future …
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POTW: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark Emily Dickinson We grow accustomed to the Dark – When light is put away – As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Goodbye – A Moment — We uncertain step For newness of the night – Then — fit our Vision to the Dark – And …
POTW: On Meaning in Poetry
“Recuerdo” by Edna St. Vincent Millay We were very tired, we were very merry– We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable– But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And …
POTW: A Child’s Garden of Verses
“Bedtime in Summer” by Robert Louis Stevenson In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up people’s feet Still …