Enough gloom, here's a poem instead

[tree_and_leaf]

Apt for the time of year, I feel - heading towards Advent and Christmas, but not there yet. I've always loved this poem, which is hard to find online, even with Google, so I'm practically performing a public service.

So here we are: "After Trinity" - John Meade Faulkner.


We have done with dogma and divinity,
Easter and Whitsun past,
The long, long Sundays after Trinity
Are here with us at last;
The passionless Sundays after Trinity,
Neither feast-day nor fast.

Christmas comes with plenty,
Lent spreads out its pall,
But these are five and twenty,
The longest Sundays of all;
The placid Sundays after Trinity,
Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.

Spring with its burst is over,
Summer has had its day,
The scented grasses and clover
Are cut, and dried into hay;
The singing-birds are silent,
And the swallows flown away.

Post pugnam pausa fiet;
Lord, we have made our choice;
In the stillness of autumn quiet,
We have heard the still, small voice.
We have sung Oh where shall Wisdom?
Thick paper, folio, Boyce.

Let it not all be sadness,
Nor omnia vanitas,
Stir up a little gladness
To lighten the Tibi cras;
Send us that little summer,
That comes with Martinmas.

When still the cloudlet dapples
The windless cobalt blue,
And the scent of gathered apples
Fills all the store-rooms through,
The gossamer silvers the bramble,
The lawns are gemmed with dew.

An end of tombstone Latinity,
Stir up sober mirth,
Twenty-fifth after Trinity,
Kneel with the listening earth
Behind the Advent trumpets
They are singing Emmanuel’s birth

Comments

[carlanime.livejournal.com]

No "practically" about it--I'd never read this before, and I love it. Thank you.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm glad you enjoyed it - it's a lovely, if obscure, poem.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Certainly a lot more cheerful than The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

I do love this time of year, right up to the point when it rains for an entire week. I've got my little blue Oxford diary (free! an improvement on Cambridge, where we had to buy the things), full of * Sunday after Trinity and Septuagesima, and various saints of presumably Oxford significant, which always makes me feel nostaligc for the days in which my father got one from Leeds and used to let me play with it.

[tree_and_leaf]

Good heavens - what on earth is that a quote from?

right up to the point when it rains for an entire week.

Yes - we've just had that, although today was decent again - hurrah!

University diaries are great, especially when they contain obscure dates only of institutional significance, like the feast of S. Whatshername that used to have an anchorhold under the House. Or St Edmund of Abingdon, founder of Teddy Hall and possibly the most obscure person ever to have an Oxbridge college named after him (certainly the most obscure saint to enjoy such an honour....)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

"A nice gloomy piece out of Jeremiah", as the Dowager Duchess would put it. (VIII. 20)

[tree_and_leaf]

*sigh* My knowledge of the OT evidently leaves something to be desired.

[ms-wanderlust.livejournal.com]

How lovely! Thanks for posting this. As a member of a very free, informal fellowship, much of the church calendar passes us by....at least when it relates to liturgy, specific readings for specific days and so on. There's a word to describe these things and, for the moment, it escapes me! And I have to say that part of me misses the tradition. So this poem has reminded me of things long-forgotten.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm a big fan of the church year and the alteration of feast and fast; it seems a very natural rhythmn to me. Of course, sometimes it's good to be able to be more spontaneous, but the big advantage of a lectionary is it stops you avoiding the bits you don't like...

But anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the poem, it deserves to be better known than it is. It's also one of the most Anglican poems I know!

[rosemary-green.livejournal.com]

I printed this and showed it to a few other fellow Episcopalians, and we are all enjoying it immensely! It is funny but also quite lovely:
When still the cloudlet dapples
The windless cobalt blue,
And the scent of gathered apples
Fills all the store-rooms through,
The gossamer silvers the bramble,
The lawns are gemmed with dew.

Just now I'm not in a big hurry for "After Trinity" to end, as I have two acolyte robes to sew before Advent!

[tree_and_leaf]

Ouch. My fingers hurt at the thought. (I kept meaning to shorten some of the albs we have in our college chapel, becuase they were obviously bought by someone who was still reckoning with all-male acolytes - and all six-footers, at that, but it still hasn't got done...)

... I'm glad the poem was appreciated and shared, though: it's always been pne of my favourites (I'm also pushed to think of a more thoroughly Anglican poem!)