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Hymn #82: God of Grace and God of Glory

Jun19

Lyrics: Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1930.
Music: CWM RHONDDA by John Hughes, 1907.
Theme: Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should. Ephesians 6:19-20.

October 5, 1930, saw the celebration of the first service at Riverside Church, New York City. To mark the occasion, Harry wrote the hymn “God of Grace and God of Glory.”

God of grace and God of glory,
On Thy people pour Thy power.
Crown Thine ancient church’s story,
Bring her bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the facing of this hour,
For the facing of this hour.

Lo! the hosts of evil ’round us,
Scorn Thy Christ, assail His ways.
From the fears that long have bound us,
Free our hearts to faith and praise.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
For the living of these days,
For the living of these days.

Cure Thy children’s warring madness,
Bend our pride to Thy control.
Shame our wanton selfish gladness,
Rich in things and poor in soul.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom’s goal.

Set our feet on lofty places,
Gird our lives that they may be,
Armored with all Christ-like graces,
In the fight to set men free.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
That we fail not man nor Thee,
That we fail not man nor Thee.

Save us from weak resignation,
To the evils we deplore.
Let the search for Thy salvation,
Be our glory evermore.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Serving Thee Whom we adore,
Serving Thee Whom we adore.

Fosdick became a central figure in the conflict between fundamentalist and liberal forces within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s. While at First Presbyterian Church, on May 21, 1922, he delivered his famous sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?”, in which he defended the modernist position. In that sermon, he presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God’s will, not as the literal Word of God. He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change. To the fundamentalists, this was rank apostasy, and the battle lines were drawn.”

It’s interesting that I’ve been reading Chaim Potok’s The Chosen this week which presents a fictional picture of the same basic controversy in almost the same time period (1940’s) within Orthodox Judaism.

Whether you agree with his theology or not, it’s a rather good and sticky hymn. (As in, it sticks in my memory.) “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage . . . ”

Sources:
John MacArthur: Harry Emerson Fosdick and the Emerging Theology of Early LIberalism.
Wikipedia: Harry Emerson Fosdick
Christian History: Harry Emerson Fosdick Dedicated Riverside Church

Hymn # 98: Our God Reigns

Jun4

Lyrics: Lenny Smith, 1973.
Music: Lenny Smith, arranged by Thomas E. Fettke.
Theme:

How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation,
who say to Zion,
“Your God reigns!” Isaiah 52:7

Composer Lenny Smith: “Most people who sing the song only half-believe it. The real message of the song is not just that God reigns over great events, like kingdoms rising and falling. The real message is that He reigns over the details of what we call accidents and coincidences. His permissive will is His perect will, too . . . and it’s all for good.”

1. How lovely on the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
good news; announcing peace,
proclaiming news of happiness:
our God reigns, our God reigns!
Refrain
Our God reigns, our God reigns,
our God reigns, our God reigns!
2. He had no stately form,
he had no majesty that we should be drawn to him.
He was despised
and we took no account of him,
yet now he reigns with the Most High!
3. It was our sin and guilt that bruised and wounded him;
it was our sin that brought him down.
When we like sheep had gone astray,
our shepherd came and on his shoulders bore our shame!
4. Meek as a lamb that’s led out to the slaughterhouse,
still as a sheep before its shearer,
his life ran down upon the ground like pouring rain
that we might be born again!
5. Out of the tomb he came with grace and majesty;
he is alive, he is alive!
God loves us so:
see here his hands, his feet, his side;
yes, we know he is alive!

Text based on Isaiah 52:7. Text and music © 1974, 1978, New Jerusalem Music.
You can listen to an instrumental version of this contemporary hymn here.
And here’s an October, 2008 blog interview with Mr. Smith in which he says: “I would love to see the young musicians study literature and poetry to help them learn how to write inspired lyrics. I would love to see them learn how to write melodies with one finger on the piano and THEN go after the chords, rather than press melodies into chord patterns. I would love to see the young artists go forth… into the coffee houses and bookstores and clubs and get into the action.” Among other things.

And here is where you can download mp3 files of the songs on Mr. Smith’s one album:
Deep Calls to Deep.
FInally, here’s Sufjan Stevens singing a Lenny Smith composition entitled But For You Who Fear My Name. I do like me some Sufjan, thanks to my two eldest who introduced me to Mr. Stevens and his music a few years ago.

Sources:
Our God Reigns by Phil Christensen and Shari Macdonald.
The Blah Blah: Indie Music That Could Change Your Life. Or Not.

Hymn #100: O God Our Help In Ages Past

Jun2

Lyrics: Isaac Watts, The Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, 1719.
Music: ST ANNE by WIlliam Croft, 1708.
Theme: Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Psalm 90:1-2

Hannah: . . . a beautiful commentary of the frailty of human life, and the omnipotent strength of an immortal God. This is a beautiful cry to God for help in our brief lives, and a remembrance that He is our home in the next one.


O God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Our shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal home.

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defence is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

Thy Word commands our flesh to dust,
Return, ye sons of men:
All nations rose from earth at first,
And turn to earth again.

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.

The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
With all their lives and cares,
Are carried downwards by the flood,
And lost in following years.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ‘tis night.

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

From The Second World War by Winston Churchill, Vol. 3, p. 345:

On Sunday morning, August 10, (l94l) Mr Roosevelt came aboard H.M.S. PRINCE OF WALES and, with his Staff officers and several hundred representatives of all ranks of the United States Navy and Marines, attended Divine Service on the quarterdeck. This service was felt by all of us to be a deeply moving expression of the unity of faith of our two peoples, and none who took part in it will forget the spectacle presented that sunlit morning on the crowded quarterdeck…… the American and British chaplains sharing in the reading of the prayers.. I chose the hymns myself.

We ended with “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” which Macaulay reminds us the Ironsides had chanted as they bore John Hampden’s body to the grave. Every word seemed to stir the heart. It was a great hour to live. Nearly half those who sang were soon to die.”

This hymn is inextricably linked, in my mind at least, with Churchill and with the heroism of the British people during World War II. In the final scenes of the WWII film Mrs. Miniver, as the people gather in a bomb-damaged church, the preacher exhorts them on remaining steadfast and faithful as the ST ANNE tune to O God Our Help in Ages Past plays in the background. According to Cyber Hymnal, the same hymn was played at Sir WInston Churchill’s funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London in 1965.

I know of two alternate tunes to this venerable hymn:

Sovereign Grace has a mp3 version that you can download for free if you like it.
My friend Hannah also has composed a tune setting for the lyrics to O God Our Help in Ages Past, and we sing her tune at my church. I wish you could hear it; she’s quite a talented composer.

I also found at iTunes a ST ANNE rendition by Bing Crosby, and I just had to buy it. I’m rather fond of Mr. Crosby’s crooning.

Sources:
Hymn History: O God Our Help in Ages Past.
Cyber Hymnal: O God Our Help in Ages Past.
W. G. Parker: An Historical Link With 1941 World War II.

The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips

May30

The Well and the Mine is Alabama author Gin Phillips’s first novel, and I’m impressed. The plot is simple: Nine year old Tess witnesses a tragedy on her own back porch, and she and her older sister, Virgie, try to figure out why a Mystery Woman threw a baby in their well. It’s very much a bildungsroman, a coming of age story, reminiscent of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. (OK, I’m not saying it’s as good as To Kill a Mockingbird, but the setting and themes are similar. And it is good.)

The well part of the title is indicative of the plot; the mine points to the setting. The story of Tess and VIrgie and their family takes place in the fictional mining town of Carbon Hill, Alabama, somewhere not too far from Birmingham. Tess’s daddy is a coal miner; her mother is a homemaker who works from dawn to late at night to put food on the table and make a life for herself, her husband, and her three children. Tess and Virgie have a little brother, Jack. They’re all good folks.

Each member of the family takes turns telling the story in first person from his or her point of view, sometimes for a few paragraphs and sometimes for several pages. This rotating narration was annoying at first. I had to keep looking back to the beginning of the section to the name in italics to see who was talking, who “I” was this time. But you get used to it, and this style of story-telling has the advantage of giving the reader a fuller view of what’s going on in the family, of family dynamics, of how different people see things. Each of the five narrators became a real person for me. I felt I knew them, and I was glad that Ms. Phillips saw fit to tell us over the course of the story, which mainly focuses on one summer in 1931, what happened to each family member in later life.

I’m glad I got to read this novel about life during the Great Depression in a coal-mining town in northern Alabama. I didn’t even know they had coal mines in Alabama. I associate coal mining with Kentucky and West Virginia. At any rate, if you’re a fan of the Southern novel, the summer-of-growing-up family slice of life novel, or the gentle, rambling, character-driven story of an historical era, The Well and the Mine will fit the bill. Recommended.

Gringolandia by Lyn Miller-Lachman

May11

I must say upfront that the political agenda in this YA novel made me uncomfortable. Maybe that’s a good thing; we all need to have our assumptions challenged at times, especially political assumptions. However, I don’t know enough about the historical and geographical setting of the book, late twentieth century Chile, to know whether the author was portraying events and government actions accurately and fully or not.

That said, the book is set in Chile—Pinochet’s Chile. The CIA is the villainous corporation in the background, and protagonist Daniel’s Communist father, Marcelo, is the good guy. In 1980 when Daniel was only twelve years old the police arrested Marcelo because he was the publisher and primary journalist for an underground newspaper written in opposition to Chile’s military regime.

After his father’s arrest, Daniel, his mother, and his younger sister Tina flee to Wisconsin while his father remains imprisoned in Chile. Although the small family tries to influence the Chilean government to release Marcelo and other prisoners of conscience, they are also making a new life for themselves in Wisconsin and becoming part of “Gringolandia”, a land their father hates because of its support for Pinochet and his thugs.

When Marcelo is released from prison and rejoins his family in the U.S., there are problems that seem to keep multiplying. How can Marcelo recover menatlly and physically from the years of imprisonment and torture? What is he to do with his life now that he is free? Is Daniel Chilean or American, chileno or gringo? What about Daniel’s gringa girlfriend? Will she ever be able to understand what it means to fight against a repressive and dictatorial government? Can Daniel and his father restore the father/son relationship that was interrupted by his father’s arrest? Can Daniel’s mother return to a traditional marriage relationship after six years of independence in the U.S.?

The story edges into a kind of racism or xenophobia that implies that someone from another culture or country can never understand or relate to a native of, for instance, Chile. This premise is never stated, but it is there under the surface. Also, the ideas that Salvador Allende was a hero, the socialist saviour of Chile (questionable) and that Pinochet was a power-hungry and thuggish dictator (probably quite true) are basic to the story, and again, I’m not really prepared to evaluate the evidence for and against those characterizations. I have heard of the “desaparecidos” during Pinochet’s rule, from 1973-1990, and I’m sure that the imprisonment and torture described in the book were tragically common and standard practice in Chile at the time.

Altogether, Gringolandia was a good story, a useful look at one family’s immigrant experience, and an education in the politics, history, and culture of Chile. I didn’t like the ending of the story very much, but I felt it was realistic and probable for the characters as I’d gotten to know them over the course of the book.

Favorite Poets: Walter de la Mare

Apr16

“A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape bottom on anything solid. A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify it by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.”
~E.B. White


The Listeners (1912)

“Is there anybody there?” said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest’s ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
“Is there anybody there?” he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
‘Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:—
“Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,” he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

So, tell me, who is The Traveller? And who are the listeners? And whom are they to tell that the traveller kept his word? Why won’t the listeners answer? A very mysterious poem indeed.

The Poetry Friday round-up for today is at Becky’s Book Reviews.

The Love Letters by Madeleine L’Engle

Feb24

The Love Letters may be my favorite of Ms. L’Engle’s books. I just re-read it for my Semicolon Book Club, and it did not disappoint. I did notice a few new things this time. (I hadn’t read the book in several years.)

The story takes place in two time periods: a 1960’s present and 17th century Portugal. In the present, Charlotte is in Portugal on an unannounced visit to her mother-in-law, the great cellist, Violet Napier. Charlotte has run away from New York and from her marriage to Patrick, Violet’s son, for reasons that are not clear in the beginning of the novel but that unfold as Charlotte comes to identify with Mariana Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun (b.1640, d.1743) who is the purported author of a book called Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

I realized that in the book, in Charlotte’s story at least, not much happens. The story is mostly about Charlotte’s internal struggles as she comes to terms with the death of her marriage. Mariana’s story has more of a plot, but part of the interest of the novel is in finding out what happened to Mariana. So stop here if you want no spoilers.

The Love Letters is a book about vows and about keeping vows, and about that all-consuming philosophical question of the sixties that has continued to preoccupy people into the twenty-first century: “You think, then, that values change? That there are no absolutes?” And if there are moral absolutes, how do we as imperfect people relate to those laws of conduct and morality?

I think in some ways The Love Letters gives an inadequate answer to those very important questions. Both Charlotte and Mariana come to the somewhat reluctant conclusion that their marriage vows are irrevocable and inextricably bound to their personhood. However, Charlotte’s story, especially, is incomplete. How does one keep one’s vows to, keep loving, a person who is not keeping covenant with you? Mariana at least has God, from whom she has run away, but who has never, even in her darkest hours, deserted her. Charlotte is not even sure she believes in God, but in the end she turns back to Patrick, to her marriage, hoping that God will help her to restore what has died.

“Supposing,” she said, slowly, “you are sitting in a train standing still in a great railroad station. And supposing the train on the track next to yours began to move. It would seem to you that it was your train that was moving, and in the opposite direction. The only way you could tell about yourself, which way you were going, or even if you were going anywhere at all, would be to find a point of reference, something standing still, perhaps a person on the next platform; and in relation to this person you could judge your own direction and motion. The person standing still on the platform wouldn’t be telling you where you were going or what was happening, but without him you wouldn’t know. You don’t need to yell out the train window and ask directions. All you need to do is see your point of reference.”

Charlotte keeps saying throughout the book that she is looking for a “point of reference”. Of course, the only fixed point of reference for human beings is God Himself. Charlotte goes back to Patrick with God as her witness and strength, or else she can’t really go back at all. Am I saying that non-Christians can’t have strong marriages, can’t keep their promises, can’t love? In a way, yes. None of us can bear the pain of loving truly and deeply and vulnerably and sacrificially because our own brokenness and sin get in the way. Only God can enable that kind of love; only He is stable enough to be a point of reference. Maybe He does the enabling in some non-Christian marriages and relationships as a sort of common grace, but I am convinced that it is only He that holds this world together.

The monthly tea for the Semicolon Book Club will be held this Saturday at 3:00 P.M. at my home. We will further discuss The Love Letters by Madeleine L’Engle. Email me at sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom for more information. The book selection for the Semicolon Book Club for March is John Adams by David McCullough.

Other books that may be of interest to readers of The Love Letters:

Mariana by Katherine Vaz. In this novel, a Portuguese-American author gives her version of the story of Mariana Alcoforado.

Certain Women by Madeleine L’Engle. Another book about marriage and keeping vows and in which another historical person, this time King David of the Bible, becomes a point of reference and identification for a modern-day man.

Letters of a Portuguese Nun: Uncovering the Mystery Behind a 17th Century Forbidden Love by Miriam Cyr.

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Not because of the Portuguese connection, although that may be what made me think of them, but Ms. Browning’s poems of love are much more controlled and formed than Sister Mariana’s passionate outpourings and because of that, in my opinion, more profoundly passionate.

Secret Keeper by Mitali Perkins

Jan13

I had been saving the ARC I received of Mitali Perkins’ new YA novel Secret Keeper for a treat and because I thought that a review closer to the time of publication would be more helpful to readers. In December I succumbed, and read it.

Such a powerful story! It’s something of a romance, and I so wanted everything to turn out just like the fairy tales. And yet I felt as I read that it couldn’t really have a traditional happy ending and that it couldn’t have been written in any other way. Secret Keeper is a tale of love and loss, of traditional family and of new ways and mores creeping into and disrupting the old conventions. It’s a story that bridges cultures and creates understanding and makes even WASPs like me feel a twinge of identification with the characters and their very human situations.

The main character of the novel is sixteen year old Asha, the younger of two daughters in the Gupta family. As the story opens, Asha, her sister Reet, and their mother are on a train headed for a visit of indeterminate length with their Baba’s family in Calcutta. Baba (Father) himself is in America looking for work, having lost his job as a result of the economic difficulties in India in the early 1970’s, the time period for the book. Asha is not sure how the small family will manage to fit into her uncle’s household in Calcutta even for the short amount of time she expects them to stay before Baba send for them to join him in the U.S. Asha’s grandmother lives with Asha’s uncle’s very traditional family, and the three women will be three more mouths to feed, unable to make much, if any, contribution to the welfare of the family. As events unfold, Asha depends on her diary, nicknamed Secret Keeper, to hold her thoughts and dreams and to keep her sane in a tension-filled household.

Girls, especially those who are trying to balance responsibilities to family and to themselves, will find Asha to be a sympathetic character and a role model. When she is faced with a crisis, she makes the best decision she can both for herself and for her small family, and even though her solution to the family’s problems is imperfect and open to criticism, it is the difficulty of her decision that makes the family strong again and renews their bonds, bonds that have been stretched to the breaking point.

I really think that this book is Ms. Perkins’ best book to date, an exploration of cultural norms and changing roles, of responsibility to self and to family, and of flawed but loving answers to difficult issues. I highly recommend Secret Keeper, available in bookstores and from Amazon starting today. (Click on the book cover to order from Amazon.)

Other reviewers:

Book Embargo: “It was a beautiful book.. (haven’t I said that already?) But it really was. The family dynamics, with the father gone to America, the mother and two sisters left to live with relatives. The money problems, the Indian culture, it was all so beautifully written and described.”

Christmas in South Dakota, 1910

Dec17

She unwrapped an unwieldy bundle, covered with newspapers. Out of it fell a giant tumble weed, its spiny leaves dried on its skeleton stalk; its bushy top mounted on a trunk made of a broomstick. “Do you think that would do fer a Christmas tree?” she asked.

Becky looked at the dry bush with softened eyes.

“I thought maybe I could use some plum brush fer a tree, went on the child. “But I just hate the switchey look of’em for Christmas. So when this whopper tumble weed came along last fall it stuck in our chicken wire, and I hung it up in the barn. It dried just that way, and I thought maybe the children would like it fer a tree. The little ones never seen no pictures of one, even, and they wouldn’t know if it wasn’t just like. I got a pail of sand to stick that broomstick down in. I could hang the popcorn and the light strings on the tumble weed, and put the rest around it. Do you think that would work, Miss Linville?”

“I’m sure the children would love it.”

~The Jumping Off Place by Marian Hurd McNeely

Last night and today I have been enjoying this story, first published in 1929 and republished this year by the South Dakota State Historical Press for a new generation of readers. (The cover pictured here is from the older edition since the new paperback cover is not available at Amazon.) Little House on the Prairie fans who have exhausted Ms. WIlder’s canon and all its spin-offs, should try this story of a family of four orphan children who take up a homestead in South Dakota, determined to hold down their claim for fourteen months until they can gain title to the 160 acres of South Dakota farm left to them by their beloved Uncle Jim. Uncle Jim’s death at the beginning of the story gives the children a grief that is slow to heal, but the words and plans that he left them guide them in their new life on the prairie.

The Jumping-Off Place was a Newbery Honor book in 1930. (Laura Ingalls WIlder didn’t win her first of four Newbery Honors until 1938.) It’s a wonderful story of pioneering on the Great Plains in the early part of the twentieth century. Only one caveat: one of the characters does use the phrase “ni— work” to refer to the hard work of making a life on the prairie, a phrase I’m sure was common usage in that time and place, but offensive to modern ears nevertheless.

The book is for a bit more mature readers than those who first come to the Little House books. Ms. McNeely doesn’t sugarcoat the drudgery and suffering that those who settled the Great Plains had to endure. In one scene a baby dies of snakebite in a poverty-stricken dugout home, and fifteen year old Becky, the oldest of the four children, helps to lay out the body of the little girl and prepare it for burial. Some of the settlers are kind and helpful to the children, while others are mean and ornery. I think older children (ages 11-14 or so) who like this sort of tale will read anxiously to see if and how the children hold their claim and become part of the new Dakota society.

Other read-alikes in the pioneering children and young adults genre:

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson. Another Newbery Honor book, reviewed here at Maw Books Blog.

By Crumbs It’s Mine by Patricia Beatty.

My Face to the Wind: The Diary of Sarah Jane Price, A Prairie Teacher. Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1881 by Jim Murphy

West to a Land of Plenty: The Diary of Teresa Angelino Viscardi, New York to Idaho Territory, 1883 by Jim Murphy.

Any other suggestions?

Christmas in Switzerland, 1948

Dec16

“On Christmas Eve Georges Laurens stirred himself from his books and they all went out and climbed up the mountain and brought home a beautiful Christmas tree. Flip and Paul had been making the decorations in the evenings after dinner, chains of brightly colored paper, strings of berries and small rolled balls of tinfoil, and Flip had carefully painted and pasted on cardboard twenty delicate angels with feathery wings and a stable scene with Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus, the kings and shepherds and all the animals who gathered close to keep the baby warm. When the tree was trimmed they sang carols, ending up with The Twelve Days of Christmas. Paul took Flip’s hand and threw back his head and sang.

On the twelfth day of Christmas
My true love sent to me:
Twelve drummers drumming
Eleven pipers piping
Ten lords a-leaping
Nine ladies dancing
Eight maids a-milking
Seven swans a-swimming
Six geese a-laying
Five golden rings
Four calling birds
Three french hens
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree!”

~And Both Were Young by Madeleine L’Engle