For Olden Verse that Smacks of Love and Wine

When I Have Passed Away
by Claude McKay

When I have passed away and am forgotten,
And no one living can recall my face,
When under alien sod my bones lie rotten
With not a tree or stone to mark the place;

Perchance a pensive youth, with passion burning,
For olden verse that smacks of love and wine,
The musty pages of old volumes turning,
May light upon a little song of mine,

And he may softly hum the tune and wonder
Who wrote the verses in the long ago;
Or he may sit him down awhile to ponder
Upon the simple words that touch him so.

James Matthew Wilson has a really nice reflection on Claude McKay at the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship.

A Poem Re-Draft

Seven Incantations

Seven incantations in the Elven realm are known,
three for power, three for splendor, one that stands alone,
mighty as the morning sun, hidden as the night,
locking and unlocking doors between the dark and light.

First, to use a power you must hold it deep inside,
thus in power's fire's flames unburning to abide.
Dying to your shadow frail, life's borders you will cross;
worthy minds alone may make that journey without loss,
getting by returning thence a threefold work and might:
earth, by which the runes of lore are opened to your sight;
water giving vision of the future to the mind;
flame reforging heart and thought to greater mode and kind.

Seven incantations in the Elven realm are taught,
three for power, three for splendor, one most highly sought.
Force they have for changing, for they change your inmost name;
those who have partaken thus, no longer are the same.

Speak the second spelling and a greater flame descends,
sevenfold its working borne on seven burning winds,
placing strength within the heart and crown upon the head,
lore of those who have advised and force of those who led.
Sightedness of eagle and the subtlety of snake,
fishful swimming through all dreams as though they were a lake,
divination's guidance like the tortoise in his shell,
elephantine toughness to endure the dark and fell,
kinship with all creatures good in land and sky and sea:
by this incantation's might the mind of bonds is free.

Seven incantations in the Elven realm are learned,
three for power, three for splendor, one on which they turn;
rooted are they deep within the universe's rite,
cosmic in expression of the liturgy of light.

Rare indeed the one who finds the third high Elven song;
only those should seek it out whose wills are sure and strong --
not with elemental force nor living souls it pours;
stars instead that rule the worlds with might in endless stores.
By the power of this rite the acolyte may rise,
walk among the rolling suns and change unchanging skies,
master of all charm and shaping, gramarye and chant,
from the cosmic tree receiving seeds of flame to plant.

Seven incantations in the Elven realm are sought,
three for power, three for splendor, one beyond all thought,
signs of power testifying to a higher world,
seven words within whose hearts the universe is curled.

Charm of binding, too, may sound and subtle sages find,
ways to share the course of thought and mingle flesh and mind,
weaker than the flame of stars, yet endless hearth of light,
warm against the winter cold, against the shadows bright,
a never-ending flame that burns with never-ending sign,
a friendship high and hale in which two hearts will intertwine.
Burdens born from trouble may be shared like heavy load;
thought with thought may travel and share a weary road.

Seven incantations in the Elven realm are made,
three for power, three for splendor, one will never fade,
armaments to shake the earth, to walk the spirit way,
inner secrets of the spheres brought down to realm of day.

Sickness has no power; by a word it is unwound,
medic more availing than mere mortal man has found.
Leprosy it washes into skin both new and clean;
blindness it dispatches, giving eye its healthy sheen;
tongues are freed for speaking, lameness let to leap,
tumors brought to level and deep pain made gentle sleep,
souls transformed to healthy life and minds made newly sane,
and by it, too, there is undone the weakness of all strain.

Seven incantations in the Elven realm are found,
three for power, three for splendor, one perfects the round,
full of living spirit and of life unending source,
infinite in wonder and unlimited in course.

Death itself has weaker sway on those who know the end;
spell there is to beat it back and bounds of life to bend,
giving to the body's flesh a force to be unharmed,
unfettered by the graveyard with a life thus rendered charmed,
giving to the mind a light that dark of grave may flee,
something of the life of youth and youth's agility;
such a might is given to the one endowed with rhyme
such that even death may quail, though only for a time.

Seven incantations in the Elven realm resound,
three for power, three for splendor, one for godhood crowned.
By their vibrant power souls in holy place have trod,
changed in stages, bit by bit, to something like a god.

Nectar and ambrosia sweet may give the grace of youth,
wisdom like to ancient sage, eternity of truth.
Power beyond power such as gods alone may know
brings the final chantment as it sets the air aglow,
bright apotheosis laid in layers like the sand,
greater by the growing as it piles band on band,
higher than the mountains, higher than the crystal sky,
higher than the shining stars that live and do not die,
farther than the final sphere, farther than the end
step by step in endless way the final spell shall wend.

Seven incantations sound in Elven land and hall:
three for power, three for splendor, one above them all.

Polykarpos

 Today is the commemoration of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, who had been ordained by St. John the Apostle. He was killed in his eighties, probably a bit after AD 150; according to tradition, he was killed by being burned alive.

From the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians (chapter 3), probably written around AD 117, a bit after the death of St. Ignatius of Antioch, with whom Polycarp corresponded:

I am writing you these comments about righteousness, brothers, not on my own initiative but because you invited me to do so. For neither I nor anyone like me can keep pace with the wisdom of the blessed and glorious Paul. When he was with you in the presence of the people of that time, he accurately and reliably taught the word concerning the truth. And when he was absent he wrote you letters; if you study them carefully, you will be able to build yourselves up in the faith that has been given to you, which is the mother of us all, while hope follows and love for God and Christ and for our neighbor leads the way. For if anyone is occupied with these, that person has fulfilled the commandment of righteousness, for whoever has love is far from all sin.

[Michael W. Holmes, ed. and tr., The Apostolic Fathers, 3rd edition, Baker Academic (Grand Rapids, MI: 2007) 283-284.] 

Ptahhotep on the Ethics of Arguing

The Instruction of Ptahhotep is one of the most important surviving works of ancient Egyptian philosophy. It is an eminent example of the sebayt genre, which is governed, in the words of The Instruction of Ptahhotep itself, by the attempt to make straight the paths of the younger generation through discourse, without wearying them, and a pattern whereby princes may speak well. We do not know exactly how old this particular Instruction is; if it goes back in original form to the real Ptahhotep, who was Grand Vizier of the Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi, then it originated in the 24th century BC. The versions that we have, though, are definitely not earlier than about the 12th century BC, so either the extant version is an 'updated' version from that time, or was written probably around that time, in the Egyptian New Kingdom.

The work gives us a contextual frame. Ptahhotep is ninety-six years old, and sees the end of his life approaching. Therefore he asks the Pharaoh to hand down his authority to his son, but this also requires handing down the wisdom of ancient times. The king approves this, and we have a series of proverbs or aphorisms attributed to Ptahhotep, guiding his son in the behavior appropriate to his position.

An interesting thing is that the series of aphorisms begins with an ethics of argument, and one that captures something perennial:

1. Be not proud because thou art learned; but discourse with the ignorant man, as with the sage. For no limit can be set to skill, neither is there any craftsman that possesseth full advantages. Fair speech is more rare than the emerald that is found by slave-maidens on the pebbles.

2. If thou find an arguer talking, one that is well disposed and wiser than thou, let thine arms fall, bend thy back, be not angry with him if he agree (?) not with thee. Refrain from speaking evilly; oppose him not at any time when he speaketh. If he address thee as one ignorant of the matter, thine humbleness shall bear away his contentions.

3. If thou find an arguer talking, thy fellow, one that is within thy reach, keep not silence when he saith aught that is evil; so shalt thou be wiser than he. Great will be the applause on the part of the listeners, and thy name shall be good in the knowledge of princes.

4. If thou find an arguer talking, a poor man, that is to say not thine equal, be not scornful toward him because he is lowly. Let him alone; then shall he confound himself. Question him not to please thine heart, neither pour out thy wrath upon him that is before thee; it is shameful to confuse a mean mind. If thou be about to do that which is in thine heart, overcome it as a thing rejected of princes.

On Talbott on Augustine

Thomas Talbott on Augustine on hell: 

For based upon his interpretation of various New Testament texts, Augustine insisted that hell is a literal lake of fire in which the damned will experience the horror of everlasting torment; they will experience, that is, the unbearable physical pain of literally being burned forever. The primary purpose of such unending torment, according to Augustine, is not correction, or deterrence, or even the protection of the innocent; nor did he make any claim for it except that it is fully deserved and therefore just. As for how such torment could be even physically possible, Augustine insisted further that “by a miracle of their most omnipotent Creator, they [living creatures who are damned] can burn without being consumed, and suffer without dying” (City of God, Bk. 21, Ch. 9). Such is the metaphysics of hell, as Augustine understood it.

This is an extraordinary misreading of the quoted passage from Augustine. In the sentence quoted, 'they' clearly does not refer to "living creatures who are damned" but to things like salamanders, i.e., beings that were thought to be able to live for a short time in fire. The reason they are relevant in context is that God's ability to create such wonders is thus a reason not to rule out, out of hand, the possibility that Christ's comments in Mark 9 refer to the body, and not just the soul. Nor are we talking about "being burned"; the phrase in ustione sine consumptione means "burning without being burned". Nor does Augustine 'insist' in this chapter on what Talbott claims, because Augustine doesn't think it's possible to know completely what will happen (he goes on at great length in this book arguing that there are things we can't reason certainly about but only know by experience). He is discussing a particular passage of Scripture, Christ's comments about the worm and the fire in Mark 9. He presents three possibilities, that the words of Mark 9 refer only to the spirit, that they refer to both body and soul, and that they refer to body alone; he thinks the first is not a reasonable reading, and he thinks the third is an easier reading of the passage than the second. Of those two, however, he says that everyone should pick the reading they please, recognizing that we do not yet have full knowledge of the things to come. Thus the passage is not metaphysical, but almost entirely exegetical, and the only thing that Augustine insists on here is that bodies will experience pain (if that is how we wish to translate dolor here) from the fire. The animals in the fire example is put forward simply to say that the bodily interpretation of Christ's words cannot be ruled out on grounds that it would make Christ say something impossible. He is not claiming that the damned are like salamanders; he is merely claiming that we can't go around ruling out positions on the ground that God can't make bodies that endure in fire.

This is a common error in reading Augustine, namely, taking some particular thing he says as a categorical assertion. But Augustine's natural style is discursive; he explores rather than lectures. He will rule things out, but he often leaves things open; he will often prefer positions without insisting on them; and he will develop views at length without actually asserting them. He is also much more, as we would say, skeptical than generally recognized; that is, he will often criticize positions for requiring knowledge we could not have. And this is very true whenever he discusses the afterlife; indeed, throughout Book 21 of The City of God he criticizes various positions on this ground. He does think we can and should believe certain things about the afterlife; but this is based on what he thinks is the reasonable range of exegetical positions that can be taken about the explicit statements of Scripture, not on 'metaphysics'. There is no 'metaphysics of hell' in Augustine.

Yet Thought May Grace Them More

Look Home
by St. Robert Southwell

Retired thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth in self-beholding eye;
Man's mind a mirror is of heavenly sights,
A brief wherein all marvels summed lie,
Of fairest forms and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.

The mind a creature is, yet can create,
To nature's patterns adding higher skill;
Of finest works with better could the state
If force of wit had equal power of will.
Device of man in working hath no end,
What thought can think, another thought can mend.

Man's soul of endless beauty image is,
Drawn by the work of endless skill and might;
This skillful might gave many sparks of bliss
And, to discern this bliss, a native light;
To frame God's image as his worths required
His might, his skill, his word and will conspired.

All that he had his image should present,
All that it should present it could afford,
To that he could afford his will was bent,
His will was followed with performing word.
Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest,
He should, he could, he would, he did, the best.

Plagues of Egypt (Re-Post)

As today is the feast of St. Pietro Damiani, I am re-posting last year's post for the feast.

Today is the feast of St. Peter Damian, so I thought I'd talk a little a bit about his letter 78 to John of Lodi, in which he discusses the plagues of Egypt, interpreting them spiritually as a description of wordly life, and connecting them to the Ten Commandments. As he says, "the plagues that occurred in Egypt are nothing but wounds. And what was this heavenly Law if not medicine for these wounds?" (pp. 172-173). He interprets the plagues thusly:

First Plague: Water into Blood, "when the mind, blind to its own condition, disturbs and violates the purity of the true faith" (p. 173) -- faith, like water, gives nourishment. The first commandment is the remedy for this vice, insisting on the purity of divine worship. (Damian actually quotes Deuteronomy 6:4 as the first commandment, and takes it to cover both Dt. 5:7 and 5:8.)

Second Plague: Swarm of Frogs. Frogs are noisy, like "heretics and philosophers" (p. 173), and they live in the mud, just as the heretics and philosophers who chatter nonsense about the faith make their home among the unbelieving masses. The remedy for this vice is the commandment against taking the name of the Lord in vain.

Third Plague: Swarm of Gnats, "the vice of wandering and restlessness" (p. 174), since by their stinging they make it impossible to stay in one place. This restlessness leads to treating sin lightly, and thus as remedy God in the Decalogue commands that we keep the sabbath holy as a day of rest. (As an interesting side note, St. Peter reads the first three commandments as Trinitarian: the first is appropriated to the Father, the second to the Son, and the third to the Holy Spirit, and notes in favor of this that it was the third plague that the magicians of Egypt ascribed to the "finger of God" in Exodus 8:19, which is of course, a name for the Holy Spirit. And, of course, there is the old tradition that the first three commandments, pertaining to God directly, were written on the first tablet and the rest on the second.)

Fourth Plague: Swarm of Flies, which Damian, influenced by St. Isidore, interprets as dog-fleas, which leads to probably the most strained of the interpretations. Dogs are not respectful to their parents, and their fleas make them especially bad-tempered, so the remedy for this is honoring your parents.

Fifth Plague: Death of Cattle. To commit adultery is to be like the beasts, as when Jeremiah 5:7-8 associates adulterers with horses, so the remedy for this is the command against adultery. (This sounds a bit strained, but actually I think this is a quite salvageable association, because cattle and prosperous fertility are associated in the ancient world.)

Sixth Plague: Wounds and Boils. Wounds suggest hatred; boils suggest pride; their festering suggests anger. So the sixth commandment, against killing, is applied as a medicine to it.

Seventh Plague: Hail Mingled with Fire. Ice and fire are opposites, but here they are combined. "Thus those who steal the property of others are both frozen in regard to fraternal charity and on fire with the ardor of their cupidity" (p.177). The thundering and lightning of the storm suggests fear, and the plague is quite clearly one that would be damaging to property. Thus the remedy is the commandment against stealing.

Eighth Plague: Locusts. Locusts are little creatures that destroy all life, so they are fitting symbol for slanderers and false accusers, destroying all the good in their path, ruining harvests of good deeds, and gnawing at the lives of others with specious lies. Thus the eighth commandment, which remedies it, is the commandment against false witness.

Ninth Plague: Darkness on the Land. The coveter of another's wife is someone who acts from an interior darkness, a secret unfaithfulness in his heart. Thus God commanded Israel not merely that they should not run away with or defile their neighbor's wives, which the commandment against adultery covered, but that they should not even covet.

Tenth Plague: Death of the Firstborn. St. Peter takes the death of the firstborn to represent the self-poisoning character of our attachments to worldly things and pleasures, by which we lose our spiritual inheritance rights. Thus the remedy for it is the tenth commandment, not to covet our neighbor's goods.

"On Mount Sinai, that is, on the heights of a holy way of life, we must heal all these plagues that we endured in Egypt, all the internal forms of disease that we had contracted on the even ground of the secular life" (p. 180).

One can wonder whether anything can be made of all this, but even if the Damianian interpretation is wrong in some aspects, (1) no Christian can deny that Egypt represents the worldly life; (2) it is entirely plausible that the plagues in some ways represent the sins of Egypt -- for instance, even commentators with no intention of doing any allegorical reading have often noted that the striking of the waters as the very first volley is a blow against the Egyptian religion, in which the Nile was closely linked with the gods, which, as can easily be seen, fits the scheme; so (3) the only question really is whether we should divide up the plagues individually, as Damian does, or whether we should simply take them collectively.

****
Peter Damian, Letters 61-90, Blum, tr. CUA Press (Washington, DC: 1992)