Category: Poetry
The Prophet of Unbelief: On Arthur Clough, T. S. Eliot’s Forgotten Predecessor
By Clark Elder Morrow Allow me to quote a brace of familiar lines from T. S. Eliot’s “Choruses from ‘The Rock'”: In the land of lobelias and flannels The rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit, The nettle shall flourish...
The Worldly Poetry of the Puritans
I’m pleased to have Stephen Wolfe back with us again today for this piece on Puritan poetry. The common understanding of the Puritans, in both popular and academic circles, is that they were hostile to all art, despisers of human...
Walt Whitman on Neighbors and Strangers
It is good to remember, especially in light of these presidential primaries, that no era is without its share of baffling endorsements. Andrew Carnegie, whose imperious steel mills did more than perhaps anyone to antagonize the neo-transcendentalist folklore of Leaves...
Waking in the Dark Wood
Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right way was wholly lost and gone. Canto 1:1-3, Inferno Now, this is an interesting way to start a story. From...
Italian Sonnet
I AM, the holy smoking fire, Burns bright on Sinai’s awful height; And tremors from His words of might Split wide the earth and shake the pyre Where goat and bull and Self perspire: Vain off’rings for the King of...
Bethlehem, by Charles Williams
‘Let us go a journey,’ Quoth my soul to my mind, ‘Past the plains of darkness Is a house to find Where for my thirsting I shall have my fill, And from my torment I shall be still.’ ‘Let us...
Carol, by Dorothy Sayers
The Ox said to the Ass, said he, all on a Christmas night: “Do you hear the pipe of the shepherds a-whistling over the hill? That is the angels’ music they play for their delight, ‘Glory to God in the...
The Nativity, by CS Lewis
Among the oxen (like an ox I’m slow) I see a glory in the stable grow Which, with the ox’s dullness might at length Give me an ox’s strength. Among the asses (stubborn I as they) I see my Saviour...
A Christmas Carol, by GK Chesterton
The Christ-child lay on Mary’s lap, His hair was like a light. (O weary, weary were the world, But here is all aright.) The Christ-child lay on Mary’s breast, His hair was like a star. (O stern and cunning are...
Have a Good Friday
TS Eliot, from Four Quartets: “The wounded surgeon plies the steel That quesions the distempered part; Beneath the bleeding hands we feel The sharp compassion of the healer’s art Resolving the enigma of the fever chart. Our only health is...