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Poetry Friday: The Pumpkin by John Greenleaf Whittier

Oct9

Since we’ve been celebrating pumpkins this week:

Oh, greenly and fair in the lands of the sun,
The vines of the gourd and the rich melon run,
And the rock and the tree and the cottage enfold,
With broad leaves all greenness and blossoms all gold,
Like that which o’er Nineveh’s prophet once grew,
While he waited to know that his warning was true,
And longed for the storm-cloud, and listened in vain
For the rush of the whirlwind and red fire-rain.

On the banks of the Xenil the dark Spanish maiden
Comes up with the fruit of the tangled vine laden;
And the Creole of Cuba laughs out to behold
Through orange-leaves shining the broad spheres of gold;
Yet with dearer delight from his home in the North,
On the fields of his harvest the Yankee looks forth,
Where crook-necks are coiling and yellow fruit shines,
And the sun of September melts down on his vines.

Ah! on Thanksgiving day, when from East and from West,
From North and from South comes the pilgrim and guest;
When the gray-haired New Englander sees round his board
The old broken links of affection restored;
When the care-wearied man seeks his mother once more,
And the worn matron smiles where the girl smiled before;
What moistens the lip and what brightens the eye,
What calls back the past, like the rich Pumpkin pie?

Oh, fruit loved of boyhood! the old days recalling,
When wood-grapes were purpling and brown nuts were falling!
When wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin,
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!
When we laughed round the corn-heap, with hearts all in tune,
Our chair a broad pumpkin, — our lantern the moon,
Telling tales of the fairy who travelled like steam
In a pumpkin-shell coach, with two rats for her team!

Then thanks for thy present! none sweeter or better
E’er smoked from an oven or circled a platter!
Fairer hands never wrought at a pastry more fine,
Brighter eyes never watched o’er its baking, than thine!
And the prayer, which my mouth is too full to express,
Swells my heart that thy shadow may never be less,
That the days of thy lot may be lengthened below,
And the fame of thy worth like a pumpkin-vine grow,
And thy life be as sweet, and its last sunset sky
Golden-tinted and fair as thy own Pumpkin pie!

Today’s Poetry Friday takes place at Anastasia Suen’s blog, Picture Book of the Day.

Hymn #20: There Is a Fountain

Sep28

Original Title: Praise for the Fountain Opened

Lyrics: William Cowper

Music: CLEANSING FOUNTAIN attributed to Lowell Mason.

I prefer Mason’s tune, maybe because of its familiarity, but here’s an alternate tune from Red Mountain Church:

Theme: In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. Zechariah 13:1.

More about William Cowper and his other hymn on this list: God Moves in a Mysterious Way.

Cowper wrote There Is a Fountain after his first major depressive episode in which he tried three times to commit suicide. As you can see from the portrait (attributed to George Romney and borrowed from Wikipedia), Cowper was a handsome man.

Jawan McGInnis: “I am a evil wretched person who deserves hell and eternal damnation….yet, the Lord has washed away all those guilty stains through the death of his son. Redeeming love is amazing. I like this version (Red Mountain) in particular because it’s a bit slower and the melody is so beautiful.”

This hymn is at the top of Eldest Daughter’s list.

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.
Washed all my sins away, washed all my sins away;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.

Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.
Be saved, to sin no more, be saved, to sin no more;
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.

E’er since, by faith, I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.
And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die;
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.

Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.
Lies silent in the grave, lies silent in the grave;
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.

Lord, I believe Thou hast prepared, unworthy though I be,
For me a blood bought free reward, a golden harp for me!
’Tis strung and tuned for endless years, and formed by power divine,
To sound in God the Father’s ears no other name but Thine.

Poetry Friday: Parody

Sep25

Today is the birthdate of Felicia Dorothea Hemans, born in 1793. She wrote at least one well known poem, Casabianca, based on an historical incident: “Young Casabianca, a boy about thirteen years old, son of the admiral of the Orient, remained at his post (in the Battle of the Nile), after the ship had taken fire, and all the guns had been abandoned; and perished in the explosion of the vessel, when the flames had reached the powder.”

180px-AboukirThe boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck
Shone round him o’er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though child-like form.

The flames rolled on–he would not go
Without his Father’s word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud–’say, Father, say
If yet my task is done?’
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.

‘Speak, father!’ once again he cried,
‘If I may yet be gone!’
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.

Read the rest of the poem, including the tragic ending.

Ms. Hemans’ poem has been remembered so long mainly because of its parodists:

The_Battle_of_the_NileThe boy stood on the burning deck,
The flames ’round him did roar;
He found a bar of Ivory Soap
And washed himself ashore.

The boy stood on the burning deck
Eating peanuts by the peck;
His father called, he would not go
Because he loved those peanuts so.

The boy stood on the burning duck
A stupid thing to do
Because the duck was roasting
On the barbecue.

The boy stood on the burning deck
Playing a game of cricket,
The ball flew down his trouser leg
And hit his middle wicket.

The boy stood on the burning deck,
His heart was a all a-twitter,
He stood ’till he could stand no more,
And became a crispy critter.

Spike Milligan:
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled –
The twit!

The two paintings of the Battle of the Nile are by George Arnaud or Arnold(?).

Poetry Friday is hosted today by author Susan Taylor Brown.

Poetry Friday: The Choir Invisible by George Eliot

Sep10

I looked for a while to find a poem that I thought appropriate for this day, a day which certainly, in FDR’s words about another event, lives in infamy, but also reminds us of our own mortality and of the evil that inhabits our own hearts and those of others, the sin that sometimes escapes all bounds and produces tragedy.

May we all join the Choir Invisible, the one Eliot writes about and the one in Revelation in the Bible, as souls forgiven by the grace of God.

Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men’s search
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air,
And all our rarer, better, truer self
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better, — saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love, —
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever. This is life to come, —
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, — be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

Poetry Friday: John Betjeman

Aug28

John Betjeman, Poet Laureate of England from 1972 to his death in 1984, was born on this date in 1906. He was a poet born out of his time, in a way; his poetry sounds more like that of Thomas Hardy or even one of his favorite poets, William Cowper, than it does the poets of the twentieth century, T.S. Eliot and his ilk. (“A precocious writer of verse, at the age of 10 Betjeman presented the manuscript of ‘The Best Poems of John Betjeman’ to his favourite teacher at Highgate, ‘the American master’, Mr T S Eliot.”) Betjeman studied at Oxford with C.S. Lewis, and according to this article, JB (as he was called) rather blamed Lewis for Betjeman’s failure to receive a degree from that institution.

JB, in addition to writing poetry, was a journalist, an editor, a broadcaster, and a film critic. He also campaigned tirelessly for the preservation of the architectural heritage of Britain, making appearances on radio and television to promote this cause. His poetry has a great sense of place and setting, probably due to his love for architecture and for history.

Here are the first two stanzas of his poem, Verses Turned . . .:

Across the wet November night
The church is bright with candlelight
And waiting Evensong.
A single bell with plaintive strokes
Pleads louder than the stirring oaks
The leafless lanes along.

It calls the choirboys from their tea
And villagers, the two or three,
Damp down the kitchen fire,
Let out the cat, and up the lane
Go paddling through the gentle rain
Of misty Oxfordshire.

Go here to read the rest of this quiet ecclesiastical poem about the church’s endurance.

Links to more Betjeman poems:
Myfanwy
Trebetherick
Back From Australia
Inexpensive Progress
Middlesex
Felixstowe, or The Last of Her Order.
A Subaltern’s Love Song
Youth and Age on Beaulieu River
Diary of a Church Mouse

Delightful poet. Very British and somewhat “churchy.” But not too serious or full of himself. I like his poetry very much. It’s unfortunate that he and Lewis couldn’t get along; they may be laughing about their erstwhile feud in heaven now.

In her Poetry Friday round-up post, Book Aunt remembers poet Karla Kuskin, who died last week leaving a legacy of playful poetry.

Poetry Friday: Animal Crackers

Aug21

Z-baby is memorizing this old chestnut by Christopher Morley for her first poem of the new school year:

Animal crackers and cocoa to drink,
That is the finest of suppers I think;
When I’m grown up and can have what I please
I think I shall always insist upon these.
What do YOU choose when you’re offered a treat?
When Mother says, “What would you like best to eat?”
Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?
It’s cocoa and animals that I love most!

The kitchen’s the cosiest place that I know;
The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,
And there in the twilight, how jolly to see
The cocoa and animals waiting for me.

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;
But they don’t have nearly as much fun as I
Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;
And Daddy once said, he would like to be me
Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!

Christopher Morley (1890-1957)

I had in my mind that this one was a Robert Louis Stevenson poem; it rather sounds like something of his. However, Mr. Morley was an American poet and writer, “one of the founders and long-time contributing editor of the Saturday Review of Literature” and also founder of the Baker Street Irregulars, the American Sherlock Holmes fan club. FDR and Harry Truman were both members of the BSI. Christopher Morley wrote two bookshop novels, Parnassus on Wheels(reviewed at Kate’s Book Blog) and The Haunted Bookshop. I’ve read the latter, but not the former, and I found it a bit Chestertonian, somewhat obscure at times but fun to read nevertheless.

Hymn #41: This Is My Father’s World

Aug10

Lyrics: Maltbie Babcock, 1901.

Music: TERRA BEATA by Frank L. Sheppard, 1915.

Theme: The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Psalm 24:1.

Steve Webb’s Lifespring Hymn Stories: This Is My Father’s World.

This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world, the birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world: He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass;
He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father’s world. O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world: the battle is not done:
Jesus Who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

Maltbie Babcock: “Good habits are not made on birthdays, nor Christian character at the new year. The workshop of character is everyday life. The uneventful and commonplace hour is where the battle is lost or won.”

This is my Father’s world, dreaming, I see His face.
I ope my eyes, and in glad surprise cry, “The Lord is in this place.”
This is my Father’s world, from the shining courts above,
The Beloved One, His Only Son,
Came—a pledge of deathless love.

This is my Father’s world, should my heart be ever sad?
The lord is King—let the heavens ring. God reigns—let the earth be glad.
This is my Father’s world. Now closer to Heaven bound,
For dear to God is the earth Christ trod.
No place but is holy ground.

This is my Father’s world. I walk a desert lone.
In a bush ablaze to my wondering gaze God makes His glory known.
This is my Father’s world, a wanderer I may roam
Whate’er my lot, it matters not,
My heart is still at home.

Maltbie Babcock’s original poem consisted of sixteen verses, but these are all I could find. Babcock himself was a Presbyterian minister in addition to being a swimmer, a baseball player, a singer/musician, and a poet. He also liked to walk and to hike, and he often told his secretary or his wife, “I’m going out to see my Father’s world!” His somewhat lengthy poem about his Father’s world was published posthumously, and his friend, Frank Sheppard, set it to the music of an old English folk tune.

Sources:
101 Hymn Stories by Kenneth W. Osbeck.
The Center for Church Music: This Is My Father’s World.
Wikipedia: Maltbie Davenport Babcock.
Anchor for the Soul: This Is My Father’s World.
Wordwise Hymns: Maltbie Babcock Born.

Poetry Friday and Hymnic Research

May22

Yes, the word hymnic was in my dictionary. I rather like it.

The best place on the internet to get information about hymn writers, hymns, melodies, etc. is probably Cyber Hymnal. The site features over 10,000 hymns and lyricist/composer biographies. It also has pictures of all of the composers and hymn writers of whom they could find pictures. But the music is not nice. It comes on automatically when you click on a given hymn, repeats endlessly until you shut it off, and it’s some kind of electronic midi file that hurts my ears. Not appealing.
CyberHymnal also has a list of copyrighted hymns that have been requested but that the site is unable to post, along with the names of copyright holders, if known.

Oremus Hymnal Wiki “hopes to be the comprehensive source of information about the extensive tradition of English-language hymnody.” It looks as if it started out as a one-man project, and now others are invited to make it grow. Oremus also has articles about historical hymnals with an index to all the hymns published in that particular hymnal.

Scripture and Music has a limited number of hymn lyrics and midi or mp3 files to go with them. There’s also some information about the authors and composers of the hymns in their database.

Hymnal.net has better music, more traditional piano, and not that plinkety-plunkety electronic midi stuff. And from Hymnal.net one can embed the mp3 version of the music to most traditional hymns.

I like the following hymn very much, and I rather doubt it’s well known enough to make the Top 100 list, so I’m including it here for Poetry Friday.
James Mountain who wrote the music for this hymn also wrote the music to Like a River Glorious. The lyrics are by George Wade Robinson:

Loved with everlasting love,
Led by grace that love to know;
Spirit, breathing from above,
Thou hast taught me it is so.
Oh, this full and perfect peace!
Oh, this transport all divine!
In a love which cannot cease,
I am His, and He is mine.

Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something lives in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen:
Birds with gladder songs o’erflow,
Flow’rs with deeper beauties shine,
Since I know, as now I know,
I am His, and He is mine.

Things that once were wild alarms
Cannot now disturb my rest;
Closed in everlasting arms,
Pillowed on the loving breast.
Oh, to lie forever here,
Doubt and care and self resign,
While He whispers in my ear,
I am His, and He is mine.

His forever, only His:
Who the Lord and me shall part?
Ah, with what a rest of bliss
Christ can fill the loving heart.
Heaven and earth may fade and flee,
Firstborn light in gloom decline;
But, while God and I shall be,
I am His, and He is mine.

Poetry Friday: More John Donne

May15

I so enjoyed thinking about death (enjoyed paradoxically speaking, like the metaphysical poets) this week with Wit and Mr. Richardson’s little book, and John Donne and of course, LOST, that I thought I’d share another poem by Mr. Donne written on his sick-bed:

HYMN TO GOD, MY GOD, IN MY SICKNESS.

SINCE I am coming to that Holy room,
Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made Thy music ; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before ;

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie
Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
That this is my south-west discovery,
Per fretum febris, by these straits to die ;

I joy, that in these straits I see my west ;
For, though those currents yield return to none,
What shall my west hurt me ? As west and east
In all flat maps—and I am one—are one,
So death doth touch the resurrection.

Is the Pacific sea my home ? Or are
The eastern riches ? Is Jerusalem ?
Anyan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar ?
All straits, and none but straits, are ways to them
Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Shem.

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place ;
Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me ;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.

So, in His purple wrapp’d, receive me, Lord ;
By these His thorns, give me His other crown ;
And as to others’ souls I preach’d Thy word,
Be this my text, my sermon to mine own,
“Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down.”

“As west and east are one, so death doth touch the resurrection.” I do like that simile. And then there are the other similes and comparisons: Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree, the first Adam meets the Last Adam, a crown of thorns translated to a crown of glory.

I do like Mr. Donne’s poetry. It reminds me of the incongruities and the paradoxes of LOST, and of life in general.

Poetry Friday round-up is at the blog of Kelly Polark today.

Birthday Watch: April 25th

Apr25

Roger Boyle, Baron Broghill, Lord Orrery, b. 1621. Pepys, the famous seventeenth century diarist, wrote of one of Lord Orrery’s plays:

. . . to the new play, at the Duke’s house, of ‘Henry the Fifth;’ a most noble play, writ by my Lord Orrery; wherein Betterton, Harris, and Ianthe’s parts are most incomparably wrote and done, and the whole play the most full of height and raptures of wit and sense, that ever I heard; having but one incongruity, or what did, not please me in it, that is, that King Harry promises to plead for Tudor to their Mistresse, Princesse Katherine of France, more than when it comes to it he seems to do; and Tudor refused by her with some kind of indignity, not with a difficulty and honour that it ought to have been done in to him.

I wonder how this play compares to Shakespeare’s Henry V, one of my favorite Shakespearean history plays?

John Keble, poet and churchman, b.1792.

A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. St. John xvi. 21.

Well may I guess and feel
Why Autumn should be sad;
But vernal airs should sorrow heal,
Spring should be gay and glad:
Yet as along this violet bank I rove,
The languid sweetness seems to choke my breath,
I sit me down beside the hazel grove,
And sigh, and half could wish my weariness were death.

Like a bright veering cloud
Grey blossoms twinkle there,
Warbles around a busy crowd
Of larks in purest air.
Shame on the heart that dreams of blessings gone,
Or wakes the spectral forms of woe and crime,
When nature sings of joy and hope alone,
Reading her cheerful lesson in her own sweet time.

Nor let the proud heart say,
In her self-torturing hour,
The travail pangs must have their way,
The aching brow must lower.
To us long since the glorious Child is born
Our throes should be forgot, or only seem
Like a sad vision told for joy at morn,
For joy that we have waked and found it but a dream.

Walter de la Mare, b.1873. See Favorite Poets: Walter de la Mare. Also here, here, and here.

Maud Hart Lovelace, b.1892.
Sarah’s Library Hospital on Betsy-Tacy.