The Donkey

Only a couple of days "late":

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry

And ears like errant wings,

The devil's walking parody

On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,

I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

And palms before my feet

G. K. Chesterton

Poetry to go with Ecclesiastes 3

Shakespeare’s All The World’s A Stage / Seven Ages of Man speech from As You Like It - Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Solomon Grundy

Andrew Marvel, To His Coy Mistress – “Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime…. But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near;”

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

The Weaver by B.M. Franklin

Contrast W. E. Henley’s Invictus – “In the fell clutch of circumstance … I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”

Ps 31:15 - “My times are in your hands”

Ps 33:10-11 – “The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. ¹¹ But the plans of the LORD stand firm for ever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.”

Is 45:6b-7 – “I am the LORD, and there is no other. ⁷ I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.”

Ps 131 – “My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. ² But I have stilled and quietened my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. ³ O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and for evermore.”

Prov 26:1-12

Happy National Poetry Day

18 000 votes cast on the Poetry Society website suggest the Nation's Favourite Poets are:

(1) T S Eliot

(2) John Donne

(3) Benjamin Zephaniah

(4) Wilfred Owen

(5) Philip Larkin

(6) William Blake

(7) W B Yeats

(8) John Betjeman

(9) John Keats

(10) Dylan Thomas

HT: Today Programme. BBC Poetry Season website

The Psychologist

Also quoted by David Jackman in his sermon on John 6:60-71 mentioned below, here is a poem by Revd G. A. Studdert Kennedy, MC, 'Woodbine Willie'. His collected poetry, The Unutterable Beauty (1927) is available here.

THE PSYCHOLOGIST

HE takes the saints to pieces,
And labels all the parts,
He tabulates the secrets
Of loyal loving hearts.
He probes their selfless passion,
And shows exactly why
The martyr goes out singing,
To suffer and to die.
The beatific vision
That brings them to their knees
He smilingly reduces
To infant phantasies.
The Freudian unconscious
Quite easily explains
The splendour of their sorrows,
The pageant of their pains.
The manifold temptations,
Wherewith the flesh can vex
The saintly soul, are samples
Of Œdipus complex.
The subtle sex perversion,
His eagle glance can tell,
That makes their joyous heaven
The horror of their hell.
His reasoning is perfect,
His proofs as plain as paint,
He has but one small weakness,
He cannot make a saint.