WONDERFUL WORDS

Last week my Associate Music Director for the Festival Singers introduced a new selection to me and to our choristers, Williametta Spencer’s “At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners.”

I mentioned to the choir that the words are from the “Holy Sonnets” of English poet, parliamentarian and priest, John Donne (1572-1631). Regarded for his “vibrancy of language” and “inventiveness of metaphor,” Donne’s work is a colorful example of a golden age of English writing that includes the King James Bible of 1611, Richard Crashaw (1613-1649), Robert Southwell (1561-1595), and, of course, William Shakespeare himself (1564-1616).

A couple of weeks ago, in a beautiful hour when the snow was deep outside, the fireplace glowed with warmth and the dog rested quietly next to my chair, I read through the entirety of the Holy Sonnets from which Spencer’s motet is drawn. I rose to go upstairs mentally comparing the language of the English mystic to the hymn-writers and poets of today wondering how we could have fallen so far in just 400 short years.

If Donne were alive in the 21st century I think he would be described, in the words of my father, as a “root-tooter,” -part bad-boy, part starving artist, part-genius- deeply religious with a Davidian-like sinful self and a Pauline-like converted faith. His writing is like his life: deep, colorful, masculine, fallen, repentant, redeemed, and earthy.

I offer these three excerpts from the Holy Sonnets:

At the round earth’s imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and the fire shall, overthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death’s woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these my sins abound,
‘Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground
Teach me how to repent; for that’s as good
As if Thou’dst sealed my pardon with Thy blood.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

As musicians in the service of Christ, we dwell in the realm of voice and music, but it is language and poetry that is the heartbeat of our expression.

In much the same way that exercise and good nutrition contributes to the health of our bodies, I believe that wonderful words and great writing contributes to the health of our intellects. Words that quicken our sense of spirituality and provide us voice for the aspirations of our hearts contributes to the health of our souls.

Soli Deo Gloria,
Bill