More Crashaw (On the Miracle of Loaves)

Now Lord, or never, they'll believe on thee,
Thou to their Teeth hast proved thy Deity.

-- Steps to the Temple (1646)

My heart's in the Highlands

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer --
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North --
The birth place of Valour, the country of Worth;
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove,
The hills of the Highlands forever I love.

Farewell to the mountains high cover'd with snow;
Farewell to the strath and green valleys below;
Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods;
Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods.

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart's in the Highlands a-chasing the deer --
Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe;
My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

-- Robert Burns (1759 - 1796)

Arvo Pärt has a nice setting of this poem for countertenor and organ...

Crashaw on St. Teresa

O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they;
By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seized thy parting soul, and sealed thee His;
By all the heaven thou has in Him
(Fair sister of the seraphim!)
By all of Him we have in thee;
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die!

-- Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa (1648)

Pleasant Barbarian Saga

I read the Niebelungenlied over Christmas vacation and particularly enjoyed lines such as these:

"With show of rider's talent the tilt was carried on,
For might the knights full gallant naught fitting leave undone,
As passed down to the River Kriemhild the lady bright.
Then helped was many a lady fair from charger to alight.

The king had then come over and many a stranger too.
Heigh-ho! What strong shafts splintered before the ladies flew!
Many a shaft go crashing heard you there on sheild.
Heigh-ho! What din of costly arms resounded o'er the field."

tr. George Henry Needler

Greetings

I thought this might be nice as a kind of public record of some of my occasional thoughts. It'll likely become a list of quotes from TS Eliot and Dante (which is fine with me); maybe it won't even last. Anyway, why don't I start with a Russian proverb impressed upon me the other day by a venerable, old clergyman:

"God sits in the corner and waits."