Libraryberry Abrdgd Poetry
Read a whole poem?! Highlights here!
The World
by Henry Vaughan
I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time is hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd;
Eternity. What a concept! I actually have been thinking a lot about it. I'm fifty years old now and the smart money says my life is a least half over, so it's all downhill from here.
I'd also like to pass along an item I can attribute to some noted cosmologists. I have more than a little trouble wrapping my brain around this concept so it keeps coming up for reprocessing. The statement is this: The best scientific minds now believe the Universe has no edges and no center. I repeat for effect...no edges and no center! And if you believe as Einstein theorized that space and time are interrelated, then we can look at this revelation as scientific acknowledgement of a metaphysical principle.
Whew! I can hardly believe I wrote that last bit. Somebody put an abbreviated version this poem into a textbook of children's literature, but this poem speaks to me...the fifty year old guy. So what does all this have to do with children's poetry? I have absolutely no idea.
Why sure, it's about all the stuff it mentions; eternity, night, light, time, the world, shadow, but I imagine even a child could see that Vaughan is outlining the conflict of light versus dark. Even a child knows that light is good and dark can be...well, unknown, incomprehensible. Since we as a species tend to fear the unknown, we can conclude that dark is to be feared, and if it's to be feared, it may well be evil.
Vaughan leaves no doubt which side he's on. 'Eternity' can be seen at night illuminating the darkness with calm, endless, bright light. Beneath that perfection, however, time drags on by the hour, the day and the year. The place is full of shadow and the chaotic, tormented sphere is tossed about.
All of this becomes so much more astonishing when you realize that Henry Vaughan wrote this sometime around 1650. Vaughan is a contemporary of Galileo, the first person to turn a telescope toward the heavens. In fact, the first refracting telescope wasn't invented until 1609! With Galileo's theories on the nature of the Universe shaking up everyone from the Pope on down, I consider Vaughan's poem ever so radical! Try to imagine a time not too much earlier when the accepted belief was that the world was surrounded by a sphere, and that sphere was surrounded by another sphere, and so on until the world was surrounded by five spheres and that, my friend, was the Universe.
The complete poem does in fact mention God, by name, and that God is good. On the other hand there is the 'dark statesman' clutching his prey from underground, and I wonder who that could be. Vaughan is reknowed for his spiritual poems and 'The World' seems more relevant today than when it was written some 350 years ago.
"...Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the Ring,
But most would use no wing.
O fools (said I,) thus to prefer dark night
Before true light,
To live in grots, and caves, and hate the day
Because it shows the way..."
If you simply must read the entire poem, click on the link above.
The World
by Henry Vaughan
I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time is hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd, in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd;
Eternity. What a concept! I actually have been thinking a lot about it. I'm fifty years old now and the smart money says my life is a least half over, so it's all downhill from here.
I'd also like to pass along an item I can attribute to some noted cosmologists. I have more than a little trouble wrapping my brain around this concept so it keeps coming up for reprocessing. The statement is this: The best scientific minds now believe the Universe has no edges and no center. I repeat for effect...no edges and no center! And if you believe as Einstein theorized that space and time are interrelated, then we can look at this revelation as scientific acknowledgement of a metaphysical principle.
Whew! I can hardly believe I wrote that last bit. Somebody put an abbreviated version this poem into a textbook of children's literature, but this poem speaks to me...the fifty year old guy. So what does all this have to do with children's poetry? I have absolutely no idea.
Why sure, it's about all the stuff it mentions; eternity, night, light, time, the world, shadow, but I imagine even a child could see that Vaughan is outlining the conflict of light versus dark. Even a child knows that light is good and dark can be...well, unknown, incomprehensible. Since we as a species tend to fear the unknown, we can conclude that dark is to be feared, and if it's to be feared, it may well be evil.
Vaughan leaves no doubt which side he's on. 'Eternity' can be seen at night illuminating the darkness with calm, endless, bright light. Beneath that perfection, however, time drags on by the hour, the day and the year. The place is full of shadow and the chaotic, tormented sphere is tossed about.
All of this becomes so much more astonishing when you realize that Henry Vaughan wrote this sometime around 1650. Vaughan is a contemporary of Galileo, the first person to turn a telescope toward the heavens. In fact, the first refracting telescope wasn't invented until 1609! With Galileo's theories on the nature of the Universe shaking up everyone from the Pope on down, I consider Vaughan's poem ever so radical! Try to imagine a time not too much earlier when the accepted belief was that the world was surrounded by a sphere, and that sphere was surrounded by another sphere, and so on until the world was surrounded by five spheres and that, my friend, was the Universe.
The complete poem does in fact mention God, by name, and that God is good. On the other hand there is the 'dark statesman' clutching his prey from underground, and I wonder who that could be. Vaughan is reknowed for his spiritual poems and 'The World' seems more relevant today than when it was written some 350 years ago.
"...Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the Ring,
But most would use no wing.
O fools (said I,) thus to prefer dark night
Before true light,
To live in grots, and caves, and hate the day
Because it shows the way..."
If you simply must read the entire poem, click on the link above.
posted by Mr.Jack @ 11:32 AM
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