The Best Theology of Prayer in English Poetry


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One of the not so subtle temptations of a blog is thinking it always has to be the blogger's voice, saying something new, or interesting, or the blogger opinionating to enlighten the world, or getting whatever happens to be bugging at the time off the chest and into a post. I don't always succeed in resisting these sins.Pity, there are other voices that have more important things to say, and which say them with words that linger in the memory and educate the heart as well as the mind. Like George Herbert, in a sonnet that is in my top ten best poems in the English language – of those I've read that is, which admittedly is a tiny fraction of the whole. But…….
 Prayer (1)

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
        Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
        The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
        Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
        The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
        Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
        Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

        Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
        The land of spices, something understood.

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