Morning Star

How lovely shines the Morning Star!

The nations see and hail afar
the light in Judah shining.
Thou David's son of Jacob's race,
my bridegroom and my King of grace,
for thee my heart is pining.
Lowly, holy, great and glorious,
thou victorious Prince of graces,
filling all the heav'nly places.

Now richly to my waiting heart,
O thou, my God, deign to impart
the grace of love undying.
In thy blest body let me be,
e'en as the branch is in the tree,
thy life my life supplying.
Sighing, crying, for the savor
of thy favor; resting never
till I rest in thee forever.

 Thou, mighty Father, in thy Son
didst love me ere thou hadst begun
this ancient world's foundation.
Thy Son hath made a friend of me,
and when in spirit him I see,
I joy in tribulation.
What bliss is this! He that liveth
to me giveth life forever;
nothing me from him can sever.

Philipp Nicolai

Johann Sebastian Bach

WIE SCHÖN LEUCHTET DER MORGEN

Sonnet 3

Look in thy glass and tell the face thou viewest,

Now is the time that face should form another,

Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,

Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.

For where is she so fair whose uneared womb

Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?

Or who is he so fond will be the tomb

Of his self-love, to stop posterity?

Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee

Calls back the lovely April of her prime;

So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,

Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time.

But if thou live rememb’red not to be,

Die single, and thine image dies with thee.

~William Shakespeare

 

An apter flower for love-lore could scarcely be selected than the forget-me-not.

 
It expresses a lofty affection,

inasmuch as its corolla is heavenly blue; but this is picked out with pink, to stamp it as human and homely. 

It suggests how good stands not still, but goes on to become better;

for its buds are prevalently pink,

its expanded blossoms chiefly blue. 

Its centre is golden, love being a great giver and giving of its best.

While by a crowning touch of appropriateness, its blossom stalk has a habit of dividing 

into a double spike of bloom. Thus showing us two that make up but one.

“What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Time Flies
July 8^th entry
~ Christina Rossetti

To The Dandelion

  

Dear common flower, that grow’st beside the way,

Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,

First pledge of blithesome May,

Which children pluck, and full of pride, uphold,

High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they

Eldorado in the grass have found,

Which not the rich earth’s ample round

May match in wealth, thou art more dear to me

Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.

Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow

Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,

Nor wrinkled the lean brow

Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease;

’Tis the Spring’s largess, which she scatters now

To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,

Though most heart never understand

To take it at God’s value, but pass by

The offered wealth with unrewarded eye.

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy;

To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;

The eyes thou givest me

Are in the heart, and heed not space or time:

Not in mid June the golden-cuirassed bee

Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment

In the white lily’s breezy tent,

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first

From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass,

Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,

Where, as the breezes pass,

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways,

Of leaves that slumber in a cloud mass,

Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue

That from the distance sparkle through

Some woodland gap, and of a sky above,

Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.

My childhood’s earliest thoughts are linked with thee;

The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,

Who, from the dark old tree

Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,

And I, secure in childish piety,

Listened as if I heard an angel sing

With news from heaven, which he could bring

Fresh every day to my untainted ears

When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.

How like a prodigal doth nature seem,

When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!

Thou teachest me to deem

More sacredly of every human heart,

Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam

Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,

Did we but pay the love we owe,

And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look

On all these living pages of God’s book.

To the Dandelion

~John Russell Lowell

Caught Up

 To be caught up with Christ, in Christ, is to be filled with a love not only powerful enough to move the sun and stars but powerful enough to love that person we would otherwise despise. It is to love the kingdom of God more than the kingdoms of this world. It is to count all human empires as dirt, all our petty platforms and performances as dung.

To be caught up in Christ is to be enraptured by him, to be beholden to him, to be taken by him, to be---as seventeenth-century poet John Donne puts it---ravished by him.

Not just in the sky and on some future day.

But here.

And now. 

Just imagine it. 

The Evangelical Imagination

by Karen Swallow Prior 

London Weather

"On a day in late December when storm clouds made Alpine landscapes in the sky above London, when the wind played such havoc in the heavens that the city was one moment plunged in gloom and the next illuminated by sunlight, when rain rattled upon the windowpane, Mr Norrell was seated comfortably in his library before a cheerful fire. The tea table spread with a quantity of good things stood before him and in his hand was Thomas Lanchester's The Language of Birds."

~Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

by Susanna Clarke 

More Vigorous Measures

They must retrench; that did not admit of a doubt. But she was very anxious to have it done with the least possible pain to him and Elizabeth. She drew up plans of economy, she made exact calculations, and she did what nobody else thought of doing: she consulted Anne, who never seemed considered by the others as having any interest in the question. She consulted, and in a degree was influenced by her, in marking out the scheme of retrenchment which was at last submitted to Sir Walter. Every emendation of Anne's had been on the side of honesty against importance. She wanted more vigorous measures, a more complete reformation, a quicker release from debt, a much higher tone of indifference for every thing but justice and equity.

from chapter two of Persuasion

~Jane Austen

Living Agency

 PERHAPS one reason why music is made so prominent among the revelations vouchsafed us of heaven, is because it imperatively requires living agency for its production.

 For I think that from this connection music produced by mere clockwork is fairly excluded: ingenious it may be, but inferior it cannot but be. 

Music, then, demands the living voice for its utterance, or, at the least, the living breath or the living finger to awaken a lifeless instrument. Written notes are not music until they find a voice. 

Written words are words even while unuttered, for, they convey through the eye an intellectual meaning.  But musical notes express sound, and nought beside sound. 

 A silent note, then, is a silent sound: and what can a silent sound be? 

The music of heaven, to become music, must have trumpeters and harpers as well as harps and trumpets, must have singers as well as songs. 

“Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God. 

. . . As well the singers as the players on instruments shall be there.”

~Christina Rossetti

Time Flies

February 10

The End of Advent

I’ve noticed in recent years, however, that the feeling comes over me more rarely than it used to, and for shorter bits of time. I have to pursue the sense of wonder, the taste in the air, and cling to it self-consciously. Even for me, the endless roar of untethered Christmas anticipation is close to drowning out the disciplined anticipation of Advent. And when Christmas itself arrives, it has begun to seem a day not all that different from any other. Oh, yes, church and home to a big dinner. Presents for the children. A set of decorations. But nothing special, really.

from "The End of Advent"

by Joseph Bottom

 

Complexity of Art: Imagery and Types

Sometimes I tear the front of a card apart from the handwritten greeting, if the picture is interesting and the text not so much. 

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt (1854-55) is one such picture I found filed away.

Although the composition includes an animal, colorful rainbow, and majestic mountain scape, I knew that I couldn't recycle the image to send to just anyone. 

Maybe I'll just keep it for mental exercise. 

What questions would you ask?

Here is a link to a more extended discussion about the piece and the artist:

 The Scapegoat