We continue our weekly series of poetry that resonates with the lectionary readings for the week (Revised Common Lectionary and Narrative Lectionary).
*** Revised Common Lectionary ***
Lectionary Reading: Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
CLASSIC POEM:
The Sacrifice of Abraham (Excerpt)
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Light poureth on the world. And Sarah stands
Watching the steps of Abraham and her child
Along the dewy sides of the far hills,
And praying that her sunny boy faint not.
Would she have watched their path so silently,
If she had known that he was going up,
E’en in his fair-haired beauty, to be slain
As a white lamb for sacrifice? They trod
Together onward, patriarch and child,—
The bright sun throwing back the old man’s shade
In straight and fair proportions, as of one
Whose years were freshly numbered. He stood up,
Tall in his vigorous strength; and, like a tree
Rooted in Lebanon, his frame bent not.
His thin white hairs had yielded to the wind,
And left his brow uncovered; and his face,
Impressed with the stern majesty of grief
Nerved to a solemn duty, now stood forth
Like a rent rock, submissive, yet sublime.
But the young boy—he of the laughing eye
And ruby lip—the pride of life was on him.
He seemed to drink the morning. Sun and dew,
And the aroma of the spicy trees,
And all that giveth the delicious East
Its fitness for an Eden, stole like light
Into his spirit, ravishing his thoughts
With love and beauty.
*** This poem is in the public domain,
and may be read in a live-streamed worship service.
CONTEMPORARY POEM:
The Sacrifice of Isaac
Scott Cairns
Found in:
Poems of Devotion:
An Anthology of Recent Poets
SNIPPET:
Just outside time’s arch embarassment — in the spinning swoon of the I Am — the boy is bloodied still upon the rock, the man fallen upon him, left with nothing but his extreme, his absolute, his dire obedience.
[ READ THE FULL POEM ]
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