London walking to work? Unthinkable. The Wheel is the rock on which London stands. And moves. Jesus is not remembered For wheels. Sandals, hooves and boats Fixed his pace; the Steady, mindful steps Necessary when Setting one's face Towards Jerusalem. Bruce...
Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be On Fame, Wit, Hopes (false mistresses) to thee. Churches are best for Prayer, that have least light: To see God only, I go out of sight: And to scape stormy days, I choose An Everlasting night. John Donne (1572-1631),...
The clearing rests in song and shade. It is a creature made By old light held in soil and leaf, By human joy and grief, By human work, Fidelity of sight and stroke, By rain, by water on The parent stone. We join our work to Heaven's gift, Our hope to what is left,...
How will the legend of the age of trees Feel, when the last tree falls in England? When the concrete spreads and the town conquers The country’s heart; when contraceptive Tarmac’s laid where farm has faded, Tramline flows where slept a hamlet, And shop-fronts, blazing...
This isn’t death, it’s glory! It isn’t dark, it’s light; It isn’t stumbling, groping Or even faith, ---- it’s sight! This isn’t grief, it’s having. My last tear wiped away. It’s sunrise, it’s the morning Of my eternal day! This isn’t even praying, It’s...
On the throne of emptiness I sit and wait To see wings of freedom appear From a land enthronged with gold – Such a beautiful state – As to put a mind at rest And throw away my fear. Arthur De Kusel was killed climbing in Chamonix in July 1970. ...
Brothers be ye constant. The yoke which with single mind ye have taken, bear ye to the end: and whatever ye have seen with me and heard, keep and fulfil. The last words of Saint David (c. 520 - c.600)
Brown Grass As these tall grasses sway, wind-tossed and tawny, back and then bowing, tumbling and rising, so my life, shaken, blown and suspiring, lurching, it seems, and lifted, feels, as it riffles through me, unseen hand of God. Then for one exquisite moment...
I remember this woman who sat for years In a wheelchair, looking straight ahead Out the window at sycamore trees unleafing And leafing at the far end of the lane. Straight out past the TV in the corner, The stunted, agitated hawthorn bush, The same small calves with...
In this great absence that is like a presence, that compels me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter from which someone has just gone, the vestibule for the arrival of one who has not yet come. R.S. Thomas...
All things rising, all things sizing Mary sees, sympathising With that world of good, Nature's motherhood. Their magnifying of each its kind With delight calls to mind How she did in her stored Magnify the Lord. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89), The May...
By night when others soundly slept And hath at once both ease and Rest, My waking eyes were open kept And so to lie I found it best. I sought him whom my Soul did Love, With tears I sought him earnestly. He bow’d his ear down from Above. In vain I did not seek or cry....