It's National Poetry Day, when verse-lovers share their favourite poems. Here are five Christian poems you should know:
GK Chesterton, The Donkey
GK Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of the greatest Christian writers and thinkers of the last century, and a literary genius. He's better known for his stories and essays, but he was a poet too. One of his poems sometimes appears at Easter. He describes the oddity of the donkey, with its odd bray and ungainly walk, 'the Devil's walking parody/ Of all four-footed things'; no one would expect anything from a creature like this. But then there was Palm Sunday...
Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.
In highlighting God's choice of the lowly and despised donkey, Chesterton invites us to consider his mercy to us, too.
John Masefield, The Everlasting Mercy
Published in 1911, it was the breakthrough poem of Masefield (1878-1967) who was to become a much-loved Poet Laureate. It tells the story of Saul Kane, a violent, drunken reprobate at war with the world.
On one of his drunken binges he's spoken to kindly by a Quaker woman who reminds him that all his sin is crucifying Christ again. His moment of repentance is deeply moving:
I did not think, I did not strive,
The deep peace burnt my me alive;
The bolted door had broken in,
I knew that I had done with sin...
William Blake, The Tyger
Perhaps best known for the words to the rousing song, Jerusalem, Blake (1757-1827) was a mystic and a very unorthodox believer. But his poem The Tyger is also much loved, if not always understood. In the poem beginning, 'Tyger, tyger, burning bright/ In the forests of the night' he imagines the tiger in its wildness and beauty, and wonders what the Creator of such a beast might be. The poem is a protest against the domestication of God. He is not tame, safe and boring:
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
And when he says in an expression of wonder, 'Did he who made the Lamb make thee?' Blake is inviting us to see Christ as equally wild and dangerous.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
George Meredith, Lucifer in Starlight
Meredith (1828-1909) is a minor poet, but he wrote some lovely verse. One of his poems depicts Satan as a vast, threatening figure, a dark angel on the hunt for prey, soaring over the continents as his wings overshadow the earth. It's an unforgettable image of menace: but, Meredith reminds us, the power of evil is always limited:
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
Charles Causley, Timothy Winters
Charles Causley (1917-2003) was a Cornish poet and schoolmaster whose work is deceptively simple and direct. Timothy Winters is one of his most famous poems. It describes a child – based on a real-life pupil of his – who is neglected and brutalised:
Timothy Winters has bloody feet
And he lives in a house on Suez Street...
But the poem comes to a point when at at morning prayers the schoolmaster 'helves' – a Cornish dialect word expressing strong emotion – for 'those less fortunate than ourselves'. In a tragic irony, it's Timothy Winters who roars 'Amen'. And in a brilliant twist, the poem ends by drawing the reader into a prayer for him:
So come one angel, come on ten:
Timothy Winters says Amen.
Amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.
Timothy Winters, Lord. Amen.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
