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Today is Good Friday for some of us: a day of reflection and contemplation. A bit under the weather this week, I'm on the mend and doing well. I have spent so much time this week researching and watching old Andy Warhol films (for a MOT in draft) that I haven't focused at all on what in my family is the most important church holiday of the year. Oh well, I will make it up with a particularly good meal on Sunday.
No long recitation this morning, but a poem I have always found inspirational. Written, essentially, in heroic couplets rhymed in iambic pentameter, this is a rather straightforward poem for Donne. Traveling west, with his back toward east, there is a simple recognition of unworthiness, the need for redemption and penance, and the possibility of a turning toward.
What a hopeful man Mr. Donne must have been.
John Donne
Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward
Let mans Soule be a Spheare, and then, in this,
The intelligence that moves, devotion is,
And as the other Spheares, by being growne
Subject to forraigne motion, lose their owne,
And being by others hurried every day,
Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey:
Pleasure or businesse, so, our Soules admit
For their first mover, and are whirld by it.
Hence is't, that I am carryed towards the West
This day, when my Soules forme bends toward the East.
There I should see a Sunne, by rising set,
And by that setting endlesse day beget;
But that Christ on this Crosse, did rise and fall,
Sinne had eternally benighted all.
Yet dare I'almost be glad, I do not see
That spectacle of too much weight for mee.
Who sees Gods face, that is selfe life, must dye;
What a death were it then to see God dye?
It made his owne Lieutenant Nature shrinke,
It made his footstoole crack, and the Sunne winke.
Could I behold those hands which span the Poles,
And tune all spheares at once peirc'd with those holes?
Could I behold that endlesse height which is
Zenith to us, and our Antipodes,
Humbled below us? or that blood which is
The seat of all our Soules, if not of his,
Made durt of dust, or that flesh which was worne
By God, for his apparell, rag'd, and torne?
If on these things I durst not looke, durst I
Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye,
Who was Gods partner here, and furnish'd thus
Halfe of that Sacrifice, which ransom'd us?
Though these things, as I ride, be from mine eye,
They'are present yet unto my memory,
For that looks towards them; and thou look'st towards mee,
O Saviour, as thou hang'st upon the tree;
I turne my backe to thee, but to receive
Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave.
O thinke mee worth thine anger, punish mee,
Burne off my rusts, and my deformity,
Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace,
That thou may'st know mee, and I'll turne my face.
-John Donne
Have a wonderful weekend; and for those of you celebrating Easter, have a lovely holiday.
Grab your coffee and join us.
How are you this morning?