The gates of bliss

Over the past several Easters I've posted a number of George Herbert poems, but I've never posted his longest and most moving Passion poem: “The Sacrifice.” It's the story of Jesus' capture and execution from his own lips, overlaid with his God's-eye view of myth and mystery. Every aspect of the episode is given its symbolic resonance, its echo through the law and the prophets and the long history of God's forbearance. Even now, I won't post the whole thing because it's immense, but here are a few stanzas. You can find the whole poem here - it's six times as long, and full of riches.

Arise, arise, they come. Look how they runne!
Alas! what haste they make to be undone!
How with their lanterns do they seek the sunne!
Was ever grief like mine?

Judas, dost thou betray me with a kisse?
Canst thou finde hell about my lips? and misse
Of life, just at the gates of life and blisse?
Was ever grief like mine?

All my Disciples flie; fear puts a barre
Betwixt my friends and me. They leave the starre,
That brought the wise men of the East from farre.
Was ever grief like mine?

Ah! how they scourge me! yet my tendernesse
Doubles each lash: and yet their bitternesse
Windes up my grief to a mysteriousnesse:
Was ever grief like mine?

And now I am deliver’d unto death,
Which each one calls for so with utmost breath,
That he before me well nigh suffereth:
Was ever grief like mine?

Weep not, deare friends, since I for both have wept
When all my tears were bloud, the while you slept:
Your tears for your own fortunes should be kept:
Was ever grief like mine?

O all ye who passe by, behold and see;
Man stole the fruit, but I must climbe the tree;
The tree of life to all, but onely me:
Was ever grief like mine?

Lo, here I hang, charg’d with a world of sinne,
The greater world o’ th’ two; for that came in
By words, but this by sorrow I must win:
Was ever grief like mine?

But, O my God, my God! why leav’st thou me,
The sonne, in whom thou dost delight to be?
My God, my God ------
Never was grief like mine.

But now I die; now all is finished.
My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head.
Onely let others say, when I am dead,
Never was grief like mine.

 

Good Friday, 1613

 

On its 400th anniversary, what better poem to choose today than John Donne's "Good Friday, 1613: Riding Westward." While his body travels west, his mind and soul look toward Easter. There are echoes of Ignatian meditation in his attempts to see with the mind's eye what the mind itself cannot comprehend. Yet the sheer weight of imagery in the spectacle of Christ's death is overwhelming. He prays to be made worthy to turn, and see. 
Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, 
The intelligence that moves, devotion is; 
And as the other spheres, by being grown 
Subject to foreign motion, lose their own, 
And being by others hurried every day, 
Scarce in a year their natural form obey; 
Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit 
For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it.
Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west,
This day, when my soul's form bends to the East.
There I should see a Sun by rising set,
And by that setting endless day beget.
But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall,
Sin had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for me.
Who sees Gods face, that is self-life, must die;
What a death were it then to see God die?
It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink,
It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink.
Could I behold those hands, which span the poles
And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes?
Could I behold that endless height, which is
Zenith to us and our antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood, which is
The seat of all our soul's, if not of His,
Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn
By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn ?
If on these things I durst not look, durst I
On His distressed Mother cast mine eye,
Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus
Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us ?
Though these things as I ride be from mine eye,
They're present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and Thou look'st towards me,
O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree.
I turn my back to thee but to receive
Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave.
O think me worth Thine anger, punish me,
Burn off my rust, and my deformity;
Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace,
That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face. 

 

 

That hill of fierce fate

Today a poem more than a thousand years old, its authorship unknown: “The Dream of the Rood” - “rood” being Old English for rod, or cross. Roughly contemporary with Beowulf, it has the same rhythmic, alliterative sway to it, the breath of battle. I love its immediacy, and the vigour of its language.  Unusually in this poem, it's the cross that speaks. Here, in J.A. Glenn's 2006 translation, is some of what it says:

It was long since - I yet remember it -
that I was hewn at holt's end,
moved from my stem. Strong fiends seized me there,
worked me for spectacle; cursèd ones lifted me.
On shoulders men bore me there, then fixed me on hill;
fiends enough fastened me. Then saw I mankind's Lord
come with great courage when he would mount on me.
Then dared I not against the Lord's word
bend or break, when I saw earth's
fields shake. All fiends
I could have felled, but I stood fast.
The young hero stripped himself--he, God Almighty--
strong and stout-minded. He mounted high gallows,
bold before many, when he would loose mankind.
I shook when that Man clasped me. I dared, still, not bow to earth,
fall to earth's fields, but had to stand fast.
Rood was I reared. I lifted a mighty King,
Lord of the heavens, dared not to bend.
With dark nails they drove me through: on me those sores are seen,
open malice-wounds. I dared not scathe anyone.
They mocked us both, we two together. All wet with blood I was,
poured out from that Man's side, after ghost he gave up.
Much have I born on that hill
of fierce fate. I saw the God of hosts
harshly stretched out. Darknesses had
wound round with clouds the corpse of the Wielder,
bright radiance; a shadow went forth,
dark under heaven. All creation wept,
King's fall lamented. Christ was on rood.

Love is that liquor sweet

Scholars make a link between the garden of Gethsemane and the first garden, Eden, but where Eden means something like “delight,” Gethsemane means “olive press”: the place where olives are picked and crushed to make oil.  The image of the press is apt, not only for the scenes that follow this one, but for the psychological trauma that happens here. Sometimes overlooked, the garden scene is one of the most intense and intimate of the whole saga. Before and after it, Jesus is calm and quiet, and seems to face his own death with sangfroid. Here, we see his mortal fear, sorrow, anguished prayer, and sweat like blood. This glimpse in the dark garden, half hidden from its only witnesses by trees and sleep, is something rare and wonderful. A dimension of the incarnation we would do well to remember, and a scene which our theologies of suffering must not forget. My favourite poem on the subject is, of course, Herbert's. Here are the second two stanzas of “The Agonie,” which mingles the imagery of the olive press with the wine press, and the scene in the garden with the supper in which blood becomes wine.

Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.