Essay on Poetry by
            Bob Church


            
Experiments in Orthodoxy


            


            For hundreds of years during Christianity's second millennium,
            the Roman Catholic Church unofficially frowned upon its clergymen
            engaging in the creation of poetry, except under the strictest
            of conditions and with the blessing of a priest's superiors.
            In fact, among many Orders, any written expression of sentiments
            outside those liturgical investitures condoned and sanctioned
            by the Church were considered out and out heresy.

            
English Jesuit and poet, Robert Southwell,
            son of Richard Southwell of Norfolk, was born in 1561. The Southwells
            were affiliated with many noble English families, and Robert's
            grandmother, Elizabeth Shelley, figures in the genealogy of the
            poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Young Robert was sent to the Roman
            Catholic college at Douai, and thence to Paris, where he was
            placed under a Jesuit father, Thomas Darbyshire. In 1580 he joined
            the Society of Jesus, after a two years' novitiate. After his
            ordination in Rome in 1584, he defied the Church of England's
            order that all Roman Catholic priests leave England under penalty
            of death. During this time he went from one Catholic family to
            another, practicing his faith and writing such poetic pieces
            as Epistle of Comfort, and the more religious tracts, A Short
            Rule of Good Life, Triumphs over Death, Mary Magdalen's Tears
            and a Humble Supplication to Queen Elizabeth.

            
The great poet, Ben Jonson, told Drummond
            of Hawthornden that he would willingly have destroyed many of
            his own poems to be able to claim as his own Southwell's "The
            Burning Babe," an extreme but beautiful example of his fantastic
            treatment of sacred subjects:

            

            
FROM St. Peter's Complaint, 1595 

            THE BURNING BABE

            By Robert Southwell

            
As I in hoary winter's night stood shivering
            in the snow,

            Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow
            ;

            And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,

            A pretty babe all burning bright did in the air appear ;

            Who, scorchëd with excessive heat, such floods of tears
            did shed

            As though his floods should quench his flames which with his
            tears were fed.

            Alas, quoth he, but newly born in fiery heats I fry,

            Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I
            !

            My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,

            Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns
            ;

            The fuel justice layeth on, and mercy blows the coals,

            The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defilëd souls,

            For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,

            So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.

            With this he vanished out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,

            And straight I callëd unto mind that it was Christmas day.

            
Source:

            Poetry of the English Renaissance 1509-1660.

            J. William Hebel and Hoyt H. Hudson, Eds.

            New York: F. S. Crofts & Co, 1941. 238.

            
It was not until the middle of the Nineteenth
            Century that another major poet arose from the Catholic clergy.
            Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), an English Jesuit priest and
            from all accounts a poetic genius, established himself (posthumously)
            as one of the great Victorian poets. Hopkins won many awards
            as an adolescent for his poetry, and his acumen and talent secured
            him a seat at Oxford, where he excelled in Literature and graduated
            in 1867. More and more troubled by his homoerotic urges, he decided
            to join Society of Jesus, where he was ordained in 1877. For
            the remainder of his life, he continued to write his poetry to
            the exclusion of most worldly pursuits, and his austere and reclusive
            life was, by most accounts, gloomy.

            
This did not stop him from exploring experiments
            in prosodic applications that later became known as sprung rhythm,
            a poetic rhythm designed to imitate the rhythm of natural speech.
            It is constructed such that the first syllable is stressed and
            may be followed by a variable number of unstressed syllables.
            His innovative use of imagery established him as a major player
            among his peers in a period of largely traditional verse patterns.


            The following passage is an example of sprung rhythm, the first
            verse of A Vision of Mermaids, a poem Hopkins wrote as an entry
            into a poetry contest when he was sixteen years of age.

            He won.

            
Rowing, I reach'd a rock - the sea was
            low -

            Which the tides cover in their overflow,

            Marking the spot, when they have gurgled o'er,

            With a thin floating veil of water hoar.

            A mile astern lay the blue shores away;

            And it was at the setting of the day.

            Plum-purple was the west; but spikes of light

            Spear'd open lustrous gashes, crimson-white;

            (Where the eye fix'd, fled the encrimsoning spot,

            And, gathering, floated where the gaze was not;)

            And through their parting lids there came and went

            Keen glimpses of the inner firmament:

            Fair beds they seem'd of water-lily flakes

            Clustering entrancingly in beryl lakes:

            Anon, across their swimming splendour strook,

            An intense line of throbbing blood-light shook

            A quivering pennon; then, for eye too keen,

            Ebb'd back beneath its snowy lids, unseen.

            Now all things rosy turn'd: the west had grown

            To an orb'd rose, which, by hot pantings blown

            Apart, betwixt ten thousand petall'd lips

            By interchange gasp'd splendour and eclipse.

            The zenith melted to a rose of air;

            The waves were rosy-lipp'd; the crimson glare

            Shower'd the cliffs and every fret and spire

            With garnet wreathes and blooms of rosy-budded fire.

            
Though he suffered from what today might
            be diagnosed as severe manic depression, and battled a deep sense
            of anguish throughout his life, upon his death bed, he evidently
            overcame some of his feelings of despondency, and adopted a transcendent
            outlook to his final hours. His last words were "I am so
            happy, I am so happy."

            
Source:

            Gerard Manley Hopkins 

            G. F. Lahey, S. J. 

            Gordon Press, New York: 1972

            

            
Bob Church © 3/08

            
 

            
Bob Church resides in mid-Missouri
            with his wife of three decades, Louise, their poodle, Carla,
            and their cat, Callie. After thirty years spent raising five
            children, he has reached the point in his life that allows time
            to pursue his real love, writing. You can find more of his stories/observations
            at notquiteright/