Thursday, 10/25/12
Paul’s mention of the length and the breadth of Christ’s
love puts me in mind of a local poem. A hundred and fifty years ago Sidney
Lanier, an ex-Confederate officer, was faced with death from tuberculosis at
age thirty-nine. Coming to the edge of the wide marshes of Glynn County just
north of here, he saw them as Christ-like in the way they suffered from winds
and tides, but survived. Here are a few lines from his long poem.
Somehow my soul seems suddenly free
|
|
From the weighing of fate and the
sad discussion of sin,
|
|
By the length and the breadth and
the sweep of the marshes of Glynn.
|
|
|
|
Ye marshes, how candid and simple
and nothing-withholding and free
|
65
|
Ye publish yourselves to the sky
and offer yourselves to the sea!
|
|
Tolerant plains, that suffer the
sea and the rains and the sun,
|
|
Ye spread and span like the
catholic man who hath mightily won
|
|
God out of knowledge and good out
of infinite pain
|
|
And sight out of blindness and
purity out of a stain.
|
70
|
|
|
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on
the watery sod,
|
|
Behold I will build me a nest on
the greatness of God:
|
|
I will fly in the greatness of God
as the marsh-hen flies
|
|
In the freedom that fills all the
space ’twixt the marsh and the skies:
|
|
By so many roots as the marsh-grass
sends in the sod
|
75
|
I will heartily lay me a-hold on
the greatness of God:
|
|
Oh, like to the greatness of God is
the greatness within
|
|
The range of the marshes, the
liberal marshes of Glynn.
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment