Sonnet 19: When I Consider How My Light is Spent

When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

--John Milton (1608-1674), English poet, Protestant, politician, intellectual. 

Scriptural Reference: Matthew 25: 14-30 (The Parable of the Talents), Proper 28A

Image: Willem de Poorter, "The Parable of the Talents, or Minas," 17th century, oil on panel.

This poem was written after Milton went blind, and therefore worries that he has lost his chance to truly serve God in these circumstances. However, as a Protestant, Milton then states that God doesn't need human help, and that other ways to serve God will present themselves to him.

V: The Soldier, from The War Sonnets

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.


-- Rupert Brooke (1887-1915) English poet and sailor who died of sepsis in 1915 on his way to Gallipoli and is buried in Greece; his lone brother was killed in action in 1917 after 19 days on the Western Front.

St. Martin's Summer

Though flowers have perished at the touch
Of Frost, the early comer,
I hail the season loved so much,
The good St. Martin's summer.

O gracious morn, with rose-red dawn,
And thin moon curving o'er it!
The old year's darling, latest born,
More loved than all before it!

How flamed the sunrise through the pines!
How stretched the birchen shadows,
Braiding in long, wind-wavered lines
The westward sloping meadows!

The sweet day, opening as a flower
Unfolds its petals tender,
Renews for us at noontide's hour
The summer's tempered splendor.

The birds are hushed; alone the wind,
That through the woodland searches,
The red-oak's lingering leaves can find,
And yellow plumes of larches.

But still the balsam-breathing pine
Invites no thought of sorrow,
No hint of loss from air like wine
The earth's content can borrow.

The summer and the winter here
Midway a truce are holding,
A soft, consenting atmosphere
Their tents of peace enfolding.

The silent woods, the lonely hills,
Rise solemn in their gladness;
The quiet that the valley fills
Is scarcely joy or sadness.

How strange! The autumn yesterday
In winter's grasp seemed dying;
On whirling winds from skies of gray
The early snow was flying.

And now, while over Nature's mood
There steals a soft relenting,
I will not mar the present good,
Forecasting or lamenting.

My autumn time and Nature's hold
A dreamy tryst together,
And, both grown old, about us fold
The golden-tissued weather.

I lean my heart against the day
To feel its bland caressing;
I will not let it pass away
Before it leaves its blessing.

God's angels come not as of old
The Syrian shepherds knew them;
In reddening dawns, in sunset gold,
And warm noon lights I view them.

Nor need there is, in times like this
When heaven to earth draws nearer,
Of wing or song as witnesses
To make their presence clearer.

O stream of life, whose swifter flow
Is of the end forewarning,
Methinks thy sundown afterglow
Seems less of night than morning!

Old cares grow light; aside I lay
The doubts and fears that troubled;
The quiet of the happy day
Within my soul is doubled.

That clouds must veil this fair sunshine
Not less a joy I find it;
Nor less yon warm horizon line
That winter lurks behind it.

The mystery of the untried days
I close my eyes from reading;
His will be done whose darkest ways
To light and life are leading!

Less drear the winter night shall be,
If memory cheer and hearten
Its heavy hours with thoughts of thee,
Sweet summer of St. Martin!

-- John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), American Quaker poet

Dakota Homecoming

We are so honored that
            you are here, they said.
We know that this is
            your homeland, they said.
The admission price
            is five dollars, they said.
Here is your button
            for the event, they said.
It means so much to us that
            you are here, they said.
We want to write
            an apology letter, they said.
Tell us what to say.

--Gwen Nell Westerman, enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate and citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, poet and professor, award-winning textile artist, and as of 2021 named the third poet laureate of Minnesota.

(Image: We are Here, textile art by Gwen Nell Westerman from her website)

Dragon-Watching in St. Louis

(for Stephen, Geoffrey, Vanessa, Lawrence)

It would have been a dragon, this monstrous jet,
two hundred years ago, to the father and little boy
come out for a stroll, had they seen it go screeching down
into the sunset with swept back wings downglinting
as their words rose like drowned twigs from a stream,
the little boy exclaiming, the father agreeing.
They would have fled in terror what we take in stride
since we live near an airport and have rendezvoused
with sun and horizon here too often to fear
that this great beast might shatter, his smoky fires dim
the park, touched by the sun's last shining, we've come to see.

By the dark-mortared wall, whose chalk-white stones protect
this place from the roaring fuming freeway beneath us,
we can look far over its asphalt and across suburban roofs
at how the jet plane now small and tranquil is sinking,
winking the Ruby of its landing light, in the last 
seconds before it touches the earth beneath our horizon--
and we listen until it's touched safely down like the sun,
till silence tells us it's landed, as darkness tells us
that the trillion hydrogen bombs of our sun eyeballing space
to light and warm us this day have held their peace,
as firmness tells feet that the earth, whose sensitive crust’s
light quiver would bury us in our buildings, now smoothly
turns on appointed rounds as it brings this smoky city
gliding through sunset into starlit night, as that dazzle of
cars weaving through traffic snarls and homing on supper
           smells
tells us it's time to be strolling back home on the safe
sidewalks of this suburb-- where bears and panthers, flood and
fire and that fearful monster the Wild Osage, whose blood
runs in our veins, ranged these savage Woodlands hundreds
of years ago, before the walks were made safe for us to enjoy
this zoo of smoky dragons now swarming from our best brains.

--Carter Revard (1931-1922), Osage poet, academic, and professor, from How the Songs Come Down: New and Selected Poems

 

Lot's Wife

I have become a gate
To the ruined city, dry,
Indestructible by fire.
A pillar of salt, a white
Salt boundary stone
On the edge of destruction.

A hard lesson to learn,
A swift punishment; and many 
Now seek to escape
But look back, or to escape
By looking back: and they
Too become monuments.

Remember me, Lot’s wife,
Standing at the furthest
Commark of lust’s county.
Unwilling to enjoy,
Unable to escape, I make
Salt the rain of the world. 

--Howard Nemerov (1921-1991), US poet laureate 1963-1964 and 1988-1990, winner of the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize, and the Bollingen Prize, from The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov, 1977.

Scripture reference: Genesis 19:1-29 and Luke 17:32, Pentecost 28 (33) C

Image: Lot's Wife, pillar overlooking the Dead Sea, Jordan.

Prayer for Indigenous People's Day

O Great Spirit, God of all people and every tribe, through whom all people are related, call us to the kinship of all your people. Grant us vision to see through the lens of justice, the brokenness of the past.

Creator, we give you thanks for all that you are and all that you bring to us within your creation. In Jesus, you placed the Gospel in the Center of the Sacred Circle through which all creation is related.

You show us the way to live a generous and compassionate life. Give us your strength to live together with respect and commitment as we grow in your spirit, for you are God, now and forever. Amen.

-- jointly prepared by the ELCA NorthwestWashington Synod and the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, found at Faith for Justice.

Embodied

I am embodied first by the numbers
given my grandparents
as, trembling, they signed the Dawes Act.
Outside under the moving night sky
I wonder
what it is to be made of this continent
from the beginning.
I came from the salt and water of those before me
before the creation of zero,
and then those numbers given my grandparents
by the American government
and names that belonged to others.
The past we have not forgotten.
They said you only pass on the people’s story
by telling it. You keep it by giving
it away. So I do.
For children of this land,
yesterday is close as today.
It’s why I know the forest south of here,
hickory cream and seeds for trade.
I labor daily here with the other descendants
of the pyramid builders of this continent,
pyramids greater than those of Egypt
and unknown, some already destroyed,
by the Americans.
I am one of the Indian Horse people
alive since the last standing treaty.
We are not yet the end of this line.
I am not yet the end of their plans.
And still the standing equines
hiding in the rich forest, swimming our rivers,
all so alive they breathe
for us, and two share the love,
embodied this way, water and blood,
knowledge passing between.
Once I was told you become what you think
so I think the gone animals back,
the ivory billed woodpecker,
the river of sharp teeth,
swimming black turtles shining,
all that fell from this life
I name Whole.

-- Linda Hogan (1947- ) Chickasaw poet, teacher, novelist, environmentalist, teacher, and Writer in Residence of the Chickasaw Nation, from A History of Kindness (pp. 26-27), 2020, Torrey House Press.