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

[tree_and_leaf]

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