Sleek Sam: Of Joy, of Prayer and Life Underground

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Of Joy, of Prayer and Life Underground

Sometimes you will find something reaffirming in a story or novel where you least expect to find them. As one opinion writer said, the soul rejoices in hearing what it already knows. Here's one from The Brothers Karamazov:

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HUMAN LIFE

What mortal, when he saw,
Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend,
Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly:
"I have kept uninfringed my nature's law°;
The inly-written chart° thou gavest me,
To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end"?

Ah! let us make no claim,
On life's incognisable° sea,
To too exact a steering of our way;
Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim,
If some fair coast have lured us to make stay,
Or some friend hail'd us to keep company.

Ay! we would each fain drive
At random, and not steer by rule.
Weakness! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain
Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive,
We rush by coasts where we had life remain;
Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.

No! as the foaming swath
Of torn-up water, on the main,
Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrow'd path
Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore,°
And never touches the ship-side again;

Even so we leave behind,
As, charter'd by some unknown Powers
We stem° across the sea of life by night
The joys which were not for our use design'd;--
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.

Matthew Arnold

REFLECTION

August 2, 1798.

Why should we think the years of life
Will pass serenely by,
When, for a day, the Sun himself
Ne'er sees a cloudless sky!

And, unassuming as she moves,
The meek-eyed Queen of night,
Meets wand'ring vapours in her path
To dim her paler light!

Then why should we in vain repine
At man's uncertain lot,
That cares will equally assail
The palace and the cot?

For Heaven ordains this chequer'd scene
Our mortal pow'rs t' employ;
That we might know, compare, select,
Be grateful, and enjoy.

[For the last verse I am indebted to the pen of a Friend.]

* * * * *
MATILDA BETHAM

A POISON TREE

Spooks

Last night I dreamed that I was come again
Unto the house where my beloved dwells
After long years of wandering and pain.
And I stood out beneath the drenching rain
And all the street was bare, and black with night,
But in my true love's house was warmth and light.
Yet I could not draw near nor enter in,
And long I wondered if some secret sin
Or old, unhappy anger held me fast;
Till suddenly it came into my head
That I was killed long since and lying dead-
Only a homeless wraith that way had passed.
So thus I found my true love's house again
And stood unseen amid the winter night
And the lamp burned within, a rosy light,
And the wet street was shining in the rain.

C. S. Lewis, SPIRITS IN BONDAGE

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Of Joy, of Prayer and Life Underground

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