Herbert: Welcome Dear Feast of Lent

Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not temperance, or Authority,
     But is composed of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
     To ev'ry corporation.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It's true, we cannot reach Christ's forti'th day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
     Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Savior's purity;
Yet are we bid, Be holy, ev'n as he.
     In both let's do our best.

Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
     That travelleth byways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn, and take me by the hand, and more
     May strengthen my decays.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast,
     As may our faults control:
That ev'ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlor; banqueting the poor,
     And among those his soul.

~opening and closing stanzas of "Lent," from George Herbert's The Temple


From the start, George Herbert's poem is apologetic. He assumes that there is a need to justify to the reader the benefit and appropriateness of this penitential season. It is a reasonable assumption, for who loves discipline, penitence, and soul-searching? Yet, we are reminded "the Scriptures bid us fast"--there are numerous and significant examples of fasting in the Bible, including the example of our Lord (Mt. 4:2, Lk. 4:2) as well as his specific injunction (Mt. 6:16-18). And since we do not dispute the general appropriateness of granting authority to those people or organizations to whom it is lawfully due, how much more willing should we be to honor, in the case of spiritual discipline, the authority of the Church, wherein we have been born to new life?

However, dutiful obedience is not the heart of the poem. Rather, Herbert sees the Lenten season as a gift, "an occasion" (he says in another stanza) of which "true Christians should be glad." Indeed, he begins rather provocatively by calling Lent, the Great Fast of the Church, a "dear feast." In what sense is Lent an opportunity and a feast? It is an opportunity to emulate Jesus, and in so doing to meet him. We do not travel the Lenten road of discipline for the purpose of self-improvement, but to identify with and meet Jesus; "Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone, is much more sure to meet with him." And Lent is a feast, not for the body, but for the soul. Herbert's final stanza alludes to Isaiah 58, in which the LORD describes a true fast:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
    to loose the bonds of injustice,
    to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
    and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
    and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
    and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
                                  ~ Isaiah 58:6-7

In thus "banqueting the poor" we banquet also our souls. Those who choose to enter into the wilderness for these forty days may be apprehensive, and that is understandable. But it is in the wilderness that we may expect to find our Lord. And choosing intentionally to starve our incessant preoccupation with ourselves and our desires, which is after all our natural inclination, frees us to turn our energies to bless others. And so we both fulfill God's desire that we care for one another, and find that it is in such care that we are truly made full.

"Welcome dear feast of Lent."


Peace of Christ.  

Poem for Eastertide

Easter Victory

The kingdom of the iron bars,

Shut fast on all, the great and small,

Sought to receive One whose descent

Was like a host vast as the stars

Upon some low, unseemly foe

Whose futile counter soon is spent,

And lies defeated, and unmourned.

So vain was the attempted grip

Upon the Son of Man, that One

Who in His dying trampled Hell.

Th’ Eternal in a Man, who ripped

Apart the gates of Death, a quake

That shook the cosmos.  Th’ ancient spell

Undone, in a moment, upturned.

Happy Eastertide!

Alleluia.  Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed.  Alleluia.

Saint Patrick, Devoted to Christ "at the Margins"

Glorious Lord, I give you greeting!
Let the church and the chancel praise you,
Let the chancel and the church praise you,
Let the plain and the hillside praise you,
Let the world's three well-springs praise you,
Two above wind and one above land,
Let the dark and the daylight praise you.
Abraham, founder of the faith, praised you:
Let the life everlasting praise you,
Let the birds and honeybees praise you,
Let the shorn stems and the shoots praise you.
Both Aaron and Moses praised you:
Let the male and the female praise you,
Let the seven days and the stars praise you,
Let the air and the ether praise you,
Let the books and the letters praise you,
Let the fish in the swift streams praise you,
Let the thought and the action praise you,
Let the sand-grains and the earth-clods praise you,
Let all the good that's performed praise you.
And I shall praise you, Lord of glory:
Glorious Lord, I give you greeting!
           ~ Welsh poem, eleventh century, as found in the compilation 
      Daily Readings from Prayers and Praises in the Celtic Tradition, edited by Allchin and de Waal



The above is a hymn of praise that is not from the time of Saint Patrick, nor is it Irish (of course, neither was Patrick himself originally; he was born a Roman Briton in what is today Wales).  Nonetheless, I think it well reflects the spiritually of the patron saint of Ireland, a spirituality that is broad and embracing, knowing God as both intimate daily companion and Lord of Creation, praised by all that is.

The success of Thomas Cahill's book How the Irish Saved Civilization, is well deserved.  It is a wonderful little book, beautifully written in a way that makes scholarship accessible to a broad audience.  The excerpts below are from the chapter in that book entitled, "Good News from Far Off: The First Missionary".

Patrick really was a first -- the first missionary to barbarians beyond the reach of Roman law.  The step he took was as bold as Columbus's, and a thousand times more humane.  He himself was aware of its radical nature.  "The Gospel," he reminded his accusers late in his life, "has been preached to the point beyond which there is no one" -- nothing but the ocean.  Nor was he blind to his dangers, for even in his last years, "every day I am ready to be murdered, betrayed, enslaved -- whatever may come my way.  But I am not afraid of any of these things, because of the promises of heaven; for I have put myself in the hands of God Almighty."

According to Cahill, Patrick was not only the first true missionary beyond the borders of the Roman Empire,  he was also "the first human being in the history of the world to speak out unequivocally against slavery."  Surely, Patrick's own experience as a slave in Ireland played a part in his unmitigated condemnation of slavery.  That experience during his formative years, which also occasioned his conversion, wrought in Patrick an unswerving devotion to Christ and a "core of decency" that was to serve him well in his mission to the Irish.  For, says Cahill, Patrick was at heart "a good and brave man, one of humanity's natural noblemen."  As with all such men and women, he stands out as one who did not conform to many of the conventions of the day, especially if they were an offense to justice and humanity.

His love for his adopted people shines through his writings, and it is not just a generalized "Christian" benevolence, but a love for individuals as they are.  He tells us of a "blessed woman, Irish by birth, noble, extraordinarily beautiful (pulcherrima) -- a true adult -- whom I baptized."  Who could imagine such frank admiration of a woman from the pen of Augustine?  Who could imagine such particularity of observation from most of those listed in the calendar of saints?

He worries constantly for his people, not just for their spiritual but for their physical welfare.  The horror of slavery was never lost on him: "But it is the women kept in slavery who suffer the most -- and who keep their spirits up despite the menacing and terrorizing they must endure.  The Lord gives grace to his many handmaids; and though they are forbidden to do so, they follow him with backbone."  Patrick has become an Irishman, a man who can give far more credibility to a woman's strength and fortitude than could any classically educated man.

In his last years, he could probably look out over an Ireland transformed by his teaching.  According to tradition, at least, he established bishops throughout northern, central, and eastern Ireland: he is primatial bishop at Ard Macha (modern Armagh), a hill away from Emain Macha, seat of the Ulster kings ... By placing his bishops next door to the kings, Patrick hoped to keep an eye on the most powerful raiders and rustlers and limit their depredations.

With the Irish -- even with the kings -- he succeeded beyond measure.  Within his lifetime or soon after his death, the Irish slave trade came to a halt, and other forms of violence, such as murder and intertribal warfare, decreased.  In reforming Irish sexual mores, he was rather less successful, though he established indigenous monasteries and convents, whose inmates by their way of life reminded the Irish that the virtues of lifelong faithfulness, courage, and generosity were actually attainable by ordinary human beings and that the sword was not the only instrument for structuring a society.

Though Patrick's immense influence on his adopted homeland is widely recognized today, Cahill writes that, "In his own time, only the Irish appreciated him for who he was."  In fact, when the tables turned later in the century and the kings on the western coasts of Britain began slave-raiding into Ireland, Patrick's attempts to halt the practice by appealing to his Briton brethren's Christian faith went largely ignored.  Patrick laments, "Can it be that they do not believe that we have received one baptism or that we have one God and Father?  Is it a shameful thing in their eyes that we have been born in Ireland?"   In fact, the British eventually respond to Patrick's "meddling" by seeking to discredit him through a smear campaign.  It is in this context that Patrick writes his Confession, the primary source of our information about him.  In assessing Patrick's confrontations with the people of the land of his birth, Cahill writes:

Patrick, whose awkward foreignness on his return to Britain had been the cause of numerous rebuffs,  knows in his bones the snobbery of the educated Roman, who by the mid-fifth century had every right to assume that Roman and Christian were interchangeable identities.  Patrick, operating at the margins of European geography and human consciousness, has travelled even further from his birthright than we might expect.  He is no longer British or Roman, at all.  When he cries out in his pain, "Is it a shameful thing ... that we have been born in Ireland?" we know that he has left the old civilization behind forever and has identified himself completely with the Irish.

In Saint Patrick, we have more than mere legend.  We have a life lived honestly, faithfully, compassionately, and sacrificially.  It is a life that stands out, both in the Church and in human history, such that it rightly becomes legendary.  Cahill concludes,

In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life.  For Augustine and the Roman church of the first five centuries, baptism, the mystical water ceremony in which the naked catechumen dies to sin, was the foundation of a Christian life.  Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination -- making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish.  No longer would baptismal water be the only effective sign of a new life in God.  New life was everywhere in rank abundance, and all of God's creation was good.  The druids, the pagan Irish priests who claimed to be able to control the elements, felt threatened by Patrick, who knew that a humble prayer could even make food materialize in a barren desert -- because all the world was the work of his Creator-God. 

Almighty God, whose will it is to be glorified in your saints, and who raised up your servant Patrick to be a light in the world:  Shine, we pray, in our hearts, that we also in our generation may show forth your praise, who called us out of darkness into your marvelous light; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.
~ The Book of Common Prayer, from the Common of Saints, Of a Missionary

    

  

I Cannot Love Better Than God

A poem by Scott Cairns, from his collection, Philokalia, entitled

The Spiteful Jesus

Not the one whose courtesy
and kiss unsought are nonetheless
bestowed. Instead, the largely
more familiar blasphemy
borne to us in the little boat
that first cracked rock at Plymouth
--petty, plainly man-inflected
demi-god established as a club
with which our paling generations
might be beaten to a bland consistency.

He is angry. He is just. And while
he may have died for us,
it was not gladly. The way
his prophets talk, you'd think
the whole affair had left him
queerly out of sorts, unspeakably
indignant, more than a little
needy, and quick to dish out
just deserts. I saw him when,
as a boy in church, I first
met souls in hell. I made him
for a corrupt, corrupting fiction when
my own father (mortal that he was)
forgave me everything, unasked.



The poem expresses a conviction of mine, which has been a cause of some reflection. I regard it as axiomatic that God is perfection, Ultimate Reality, and the One in whom there is no darkness at all. Any less a concept of God would be a contradiction of who and what God is. Consequently, it is not possible that a man could be more loving than God, or indeed 'more anything' that is good. How is it, then, that we do in fact see men and women who seem to be more compassionate than God? Mere mortals who love unconditionally, even when the love is neither sought nor returned? Who accept with loving embrace the unrepentant sinner? Who forgive without measure, even when no forgiveness has been begged? Is it not enough to answer that, since we do observe such mortals, and to the extent that their behavior surpasses the perceived goodness of God, it must be that our conception of God is 'a corrupting fiction'? I'll confess that I am thinking out loud here, and not very rigorously or systematically, at that. But the discontinuity remains. It is not possible for me to 'out-love' God. So, if I embrace my gay brother in Christ in genuine love, asking nothing of him but that he receive that love in blessing, should I not expect that this love remains but a pale reflection of the full and perfect love which God lavishes on him?


Peace of Christ.

Verse inspired by 'O Oriens'

O Morning Star,
splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

A poem for Advent.  More specifically, a poem inspired by the "O Antiphon" for 21 December, O Oriens (O Rising Sun, or Morning Star).  The O Antiphons will be familiar to anyone who has heard or sung the well known Advent hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel, which is a musical setting of the antiphons, to be sung at evening prayer in the final week before Christmas.  The antiphons have a treasured and ancient history in the liturgy of the Church, about which more can be read here. 



I sat waiting in the darkness
For the sun to rise, bringing light
And warmth to cracked and bloody hands,
Grey eyes, and a body listless.
The darkness stretched onward, this night,
The longest, and cold.  Restless bands
Of wand'rers, shuffling in the gloom,
Muffled voices and stamping feet;
We all with frosty, bated breath.

The sun that rose did not rout death;
A winter sun of light, not heat.
I heard one, though, who cried, "Make room!"
A voice that spoke of another
Dawn, this one from on high, to break
Upon us, to scatter and draw;
A God who waits within a womb,
Descends to rise from out the tomb.

Fr. Robert Hendrickson on the Need for Clarity

Lord, mend or rather make us: one creation

     Will not suffice our turn:

Except thou make us daily, we shall spurn

     Our own salvation.

~ George Herbert

In response to Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori's Christmas message, Fr. Robert Hendrickson of the Society of Catholic Priests, who blogs at The Sub-dean's Stall, wrote a post which lamented the lack of clarity in that message.  Specifically, he pointed out the Presiding Bishop's failure to explicitly use the name of Jesus, or even Christ (an observation which, unfortunately, has clear precedent when it comes to Jefferts Schori's Christmas and Easter addresses).  As a follow-up to that post, Fr. Hendrickson has posted a reflection that nearly perfectly expresses my own sentiments and concerns about the lack of clarity, catholicity, and Christological focus which seems to afflict so many of our spiritual leaders in TEC.  Read it all here.

"There is a desperate need for a faith in this country that is clear, welcoming, and theologically orthodox. I use the term orthodox not to create boundaries and limits but to indicate that we can be a Church that welcomes and affirms not because we are avoiding theological truth and spiritual rigor but because of them. I use the term welcoming not to indicate that we fling open the doors and just gather about and do yoga and hold hands – but because we welcome all into the life-giving work and labor of the Christian faith as we come to know Christ at the Altar and are sent out in reckless joy.
Those coming to our churches are not looking for one more place to be affirmed or marketed to – they are looking for a place that will unmake and remake them."               ~Fr. Robert Hendrikson 

Peace of Christ. 

To Mary

At the very least, I find solidarity

In joining myself to that vast army

That has down through the centuries hearkened

Unto the Angelus bells.

More than solidarity, communion.

(No small thing, that for which we were made)

Still, I sometimes wonder if you hear us.

I’m inclined to think you do.

Though it’s not the same as when I address

Him, your true Son, who never grows weary.

The Creator of time is not pressed,

But you?  Do you never tire?

You, whose ruin was vast as the sea,

Is it not enough that your heart was pierced

Once by a sword, but you must evermore

Be moved by our sighs and weeping?

Perhaps you will accept this reasoning

For my sometimes failure in devotion.

It’s no lack of love.  I would like simply

To express my gratitude. 

Visitation

In commemoration of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth (May 31).  I am, at least, consistent in my tardiness.  A reading from Jeremy Taylor, an appropriate verse of Scripture, and some original verse.  Though I didn't set out to do so, it ending up being a sort of non-traditional sonnet.
Peace.

From The Life of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by Bishop Jeremy Taylor:

"Mary found no one so fit as her cousin Elizabeth to share the first emanations of her overjoyed heart, for she was to be the mother of the Baptist, who was sent as forerunner to prepare the way of the Lord her son.  It is not easy to imagine what collision of joys was at this blessed meeting; two mothers of two great princes, the one the greatest that was born of woman, the other his Lord.  When these who were made mothers by two miracles came together, they met with joy and mysteriousness.  The mother of our Lord went to visit the mother of his servant, and the Holy Ghost made the meeting festival ... By this God would have us know that when the blessings of God descend upon us, they should be published in the communion of the saints, so that our charity and eucharist may increase that of others, and the praises of God be sung aloud, till the sound strike at heaven and join with the alleluias which the morning stars in their orbs pay to their great creator."

Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.   ~Colossians 3:16-17


Great the women who bore
The tidings in the hill country.
The highly favored one,
Her greeting at the door
Spurs the Forerunner to leap, he
Acknowledging the Son
Enthroned in princely state,
Beauteous in the womb of the morn.
The prophetess bows down,
Inspired, to relate
The revelation to be born,
And confirm her renown.
She cries, 'The mother of my Lord,'
And she, 'Magnificat,' outpoured.

  

Musing on Literature and T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi"

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for 
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt.  I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
~ from Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot

In keeping with my resolution to read and reflect over more poetry this year, I recently returned to this perennial favorite.  Lent is fast approaching, but it is still Epiphany season, and so a fitting time to read Journey of the Magi.  (You can hear Eliot read it himself by clicking here.)

Last weekend I attended the wonderful annual symposium sponsored by the Eighth Day Institute in Wichita.  A theme that was touched on by several speakers in different ways was that of allowing the written word to speak for itself.  That is to say, whether in a poem, a short story, or a novel, good writers do not hide the meaning locked away behind a maze of words.  The words are not something to be figured out in order to arrive at a definitive solution, as in an algebraic equation.  The word itself is the message; the poet says what he wants to say in the words of the poem; the novel means what the novelist wrote (if she had wanted to say something else, she would have written something else).  Incidentally, one of the speakers observed that this approach to literature is thoroughly incarnational.  Jesus, the eternal Word, does not offer cryptic sayings to point us to the truth; rather, He is the Truth.

Such a view of literature, to my mind, elicits two quite different responses.  One might say that there is no value at all in analyzing any writing, since there is nothing more to be said.  But I think one might also say, on the contrary, that while the word simply is, it can lead one in any number of directions.  Precisely because there is no scientifically deduced correct interpretation of the true meaning of a poem, one is freed to allow the poem to speak whatever it will to each individual.  In this light, the same poem may speak quite differently to two different readers, and each may nonetheless be enriched and feel their reading to be legitimate.

Eliot's Journey of the Magi is not, in my opinion, a difficult poem to read and understand (though many of his other poems are).  And yet the final line does puzzle me.  I should be glad of another death.  I'm not sure what Eliot was thinking when he wrote that, but as I've just stated, that's not really the point.  What I do know is that the line gives me cause for reflection, because I can imagine at least three thoroughly different ways of understanding it.  Having experienced the manifestation of the Christ Child, the life of the magus has shifted irrevocably.  Even now, many years after the event, the magus ponders it, seeks to make sense of it.  He "would do it all again", despite the fact that "this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death."  I should be glad of another death.  Was the experience such an agony that the magus wishes it could have been otherwise, that the revelation of this discomfiting, life-altering truth had come in some gentler, less painful fashion?  But what could be gentler than a child in the arms of his mother?  Or was the experience so sweet, so incomparably beautiful, that the memory of it haunts him still, moves him with a desire to go back and make that journey again?  Oh, to experience again this "death" that was the beginning of true life.  But perhaps the magus is not looking back at all; perhaps he looks forward.  Perhaps he now eagerly awaits the death that comes to all men, for he has realized that it is only by that death that he will enter into the new dispensation, and there find himself at home.

Peace.

          

An excerpt from Tobias Wolff's "Old School"

A poem requires a design -- a sense of orderliness.  Part of our pleasure in the poem is that it is a well-made thing -- it gives pleasure through the authority and sweetness of the language used in the way that it is used. 
~Mary Oliver

One of my resolutions for this new year is to read and memorize more poetry.  I also want to read more fiction.  Last weekend, I picked up the novel Old School, by Tobias Wolff (I was sitting in the rocking chair with my nine-month-old son, who had just fallen asleep; I didn't want to wake him, and among the books on the shelf that was near at hand, I decided on this one).  As it turned out, it was an excellent choice.

The story is told by a high school senior and would-be writer at a prestigious Northeastern prep school in the 1960s.  Every semester, the school arranges to have a famous author come and speak as a guest of honor.  In the course of the book, we witness visits from Robert Frost and Ayn Rand, and a planned visit from Ernest Hemingway that never comes to pass.  I found it an engrossing read, not least because of the constant references to enduring authors and their works, which made the book a quasi-educational experience for me.  Also, I simply loved the setting.  I freely admit it: as a public school teacher, I'm jealous.

Perhaps my favorite passage from the novel is in the chapter in which Robert Frost visits.  After his talk before the students and faculty, he takes some time for questions.  The resulting exchange between Frost and a young faculty member by the name of Mr. Ramsey pretty well expresses, I think, my own views about art, particularly poetry, and the endurance of ancient truths amidst the onslaught of our modern age.  With warm regards for Mr. Wolff, for providing a work I thoroughly enjoyed, I have transcribed that passage at length here (the use of quotation marks to designate speakers was not employed by the author, though interestingly this seems to present no difficulty in following what is being said).

***
     Your work, sir, Mr. Ramsey said, follows a certain tradition.  Not the tradition of Whitman, that most American of poets, but a more constrained, shall we say, more formal tradition, as in that last poem you read, "Stopping in Woods."  I wonder --
     "'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,'" Frost said.  He put both hands on the pulpit and peered at Mr. Ramsey.
     Yes, sir.  Now that particular poem is not unusual in your work for being written in stanza form, with iambic lines connected by rhyme.
     Good for you, Frost said.  They must be teaching you boys something here.
     There was a great eruption of laughter, more caustic than jolly.  Mr. Ramsey waited it out while Frost looked slyly around the chapel, the lord of misrule.  He was not displeased by the havoc his mistake had caused, you could see that, and you had to wonder if it was a mistake at all.  Finally he said, You had a question?
     Yes, sir.  The question is whether such a rigidly formal arrangement of language is adequate to express the modern consciousness.  That is, should form give way to more spontaneous modes of expression, even at the cost of a certain disorder?
     Modern consciousness, Frost said.  What's that?
     Ah! Good question, sir.  Well -- very roughly speaking, I would describe it as the mind's response to industrialization, the saturation propaganda of governments and advertisers, two world wars, the concentration camps, the dimming of faith by science, and of course the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.  Surely these things have had an effect on us.  Surely they have changed our thinking.
     Surely nothing.  Frost stared down at Mr. Ramsey.
     If this had been the Last Judgment, Mr. Ramsey and his modern consciousness would've been in for a hot time of it.  He couldn't have looked more alone, standing there.
     Don't tell me about science, Frost said.  I'm something of a scientist myself.  Bet you didn't know that.  Botany.  You boys know what tropism is, it's what makes a plant grow toward the light.  Everything aspires to the light.  You don't have to chase down a fly to get rid of it -- you just darken the room, leave a crack of light in a window, and out he goes.  Works every time.  We all have that instinct, that aspiration.  Science can't -- what was your word? dim? -- science can't dim that.  All science can do is turn out the false lights so the true light can get us home.
     Mr. Ramsey began to say something, but Frost kept going.
     So don't tell me about science, and don't tell me about war.  I lost my nearest friend in the one they call the Great War.  So did Achilles lose his friend in war, and Homer did no injustice to his grief by writing about it in dactylic hexameters.  There've always been wars, and they've always been as foul as we could make them.  It is very fine and pleasant to think ourselves the most put-upon folk in history -- but then everyone has thought that from the beginning.  It makes a grand excuse for all manner of laziness.  But about my friend.  I wrote a poem for him.  I still write poems for him.  Would you honor your own friend by putting words down anyhow, just as they come to you, with no thought for the sound they make, the meaning of their sound, the sound of their meaning?  Would that give a true account of the loss?
     Frost had been looking right at Mr. Ramsey as he spoke.  Now he broke off and let his eyes roam over the room.
     I am thinking of Achilles grief, he said.  That famous, terrible, grief.  Let me tell you boys something.  Such grief can only be told in form.  Maybe it only really exists in form.  Form is everything.  Without it, you've got nothing but a stubbed-toe cry -- sincere, maybe, for what that's worth, but with no depth or carry.  No echo.  You may have a grievance, but you do not have grief, and grievances are for petitions, not poetry.  Does that answer your question?
     I'm not sure -- but thank you for having a go at it.
     You wouldn't have guessed, seeing Mr. Ramsey settle back with a smile, that he'd just been stepped on by Robert Frost in front of the whole school.

***