NAPOMO Day 9: Rex Doloris, Dorothy L Sayers

Part of me suspects that this is a bad poem, but I am rather haunted by it none the less.† The youthful Sayers suffered from a tendency to floweriness and was overly influenced by the Pre-Rapaelites - though this one rather reminds me of Swinburne. Which is ironic, in the circumstances.


REX DOLORIS
* Signed with the sign of His Cross and salted with His salt. S. AUGUSTINE.

"WHEREFORE wilt thou linger, Lady Persephone?
The sheaves are gathered, the vintage is done,
Bacchus through the ivy leaves laughing with his satyrs
Calls us to the feasting, and the ripe, red sun
Drops like an apple, tumbling to the westward,
The shout of the Maenads is merry on the hill,
Why do the wheat-ears fall from thy fingers?
Whom dost thou look for, lingering still?
( Whom dost thou look for? Here is one to woo thee, )

(no subject)

1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.

rivrea gave me:


Showing Charles I, quoting the description of the Cavaliers in 1066 And All That by Sellars and Yeatman, the best parodic history book ever written. I am not, in fact, much of a fan of Charles I (I may be an Anglo-Catholic, but I don't have much time for the cult of Charles King and Martyr, though he's a classic case of 'naught became him in life but the losing of it). However, I do have a great sympathy for doomed loyalties. I don't weep for Bonny Prince Charlie, either, but the fate of the Jacobites does move me, even if I think the House of Stewart, by and large, was a disaster we're better off without. Wrong but Wromantic, in fact. the icon is by angevin2, who has made a number of good Sellars and Yeatman icons (including the Not Angels but Anglicans one).


The pierced gothic of the Minster at Freiburg, with the sun setting behind it (and the Vogesen). The inhabitants of Freiburg know it as 'the most beautiful tower in Christendom', and I think they might well be right. A memory of a beautiful city and a very happy year - even if the tower is actually hidden behind scaffolding at the moment (I also use it for my more serious religious posts, where the snarky ones don't work...)


Surely this one doesn't need explained? I am an Anglican, and a socialist, and.... well, you've been following my journal. The icon's by commodorified; I tend to use it for political posts, or ones on Anglicanism (when I'm not using John Keble or Alan-Rickman-as-Slope)


Harriet Walters as Harriet Vane, one of my favourite characters in any medium, because of her honesty, stubborness, and way with a quotation. Also, my life looks pretty much exactly like this at the moment, only with a laptop.


Gene Hunt, in Life on Mars, on spotting-the-bleeding-obvious. I use it for being sarcastic and/ or gloomy about academia, mostly (actually, a worryingly high proportion of my icons are ironic or sarcastic). The icon's by royaldawn_uk.

Twitter-witter!

( Beware the ramblings! )

Maundy Thursday

... is exhausting, emotionally; all the more so because it's a roller-coaster. The Eucharist is a celebration of Christ risen as well as Crucified, so the vestments are white, and we had the Gloria (Lassus) - with the acolytes ringing little bells - as if it were Easter already. But the readings are on a knife edge - the Passover account from Exodus; the Narrative of the Institution in Corinthians (which sounds really weird read by a layman out of the context of the Eucharistic liturgy, so powerful is habit); and then the Last Supper in the Gospel. The sermon focussed on the foot-washing, and on the odd intimacy of the gesture, and how it's generally more difficult to allow some-one to do it for you than to do it for someone else - but the Christian life is not just about loving as much and as hard as you can, but also being willing to accept the love that is offered, for how else can we be saved? He also pointed out that the foot-washing echoes the anointing at Bethany - so in allowing our feet to be washed, we are accepting the way of the Cross, and a love which costs everything.

The foot-washing - I was one of the designated victims - changes the mood of the service entirely. The celebrant - stripped of his chasuble - kneels and washes feet. The bells at the Mass are replaced by a sort of rattle thing, which I find remarkably sinister; and afterwards, the Sacrament is taken in procession to the Altar of Repose - which was covered in white flowers and candles - very pretty, but rather suggestive of a funeral (for good reason, since the ceremony is traditionally taken as symbolic of Christ being laid in the tomb). And then the other altars are stripped, leaving the church looking bare and stark (and rather more Protestant than it generally does); it's almost like turning a house out after a death...

Stayed about half an hour at the watch in front of the Sacrament - the church in complete silence and lit only by the candles on the altar (well, and the streetlights outside). Rather disconcerting to come out into the town centre...