Each week we carefully curate a collection of poems that resonate with the lectionary readings for that week (Narrative Lectionary and Revised Common Lectionary).
*** Revised Common Lectionary ***
Lectionary Reading:
Isaiah 12:2-6
CLASSIC POEM:
Praise (III)
George Herbert
LOrd, I will mean and speak thy praise,
Thy praise alone,
My busie heart shall spin it all my dayes:
And when it stops for want of store,
Then will I wring it with a sigh or grone,
That thou mayst yet have more.
When thou dost favour any action,
It runnes, it flies:
All things concurre to give it a perfection.
That which had but two legs before,
When thou dost blesse, hath twelve: one wheel dost rise
To twentie then, or more.
But when thou dost on businesse blow,
It hangs, it clogs:
Not all the teams of Albion1 in a row
Can hale or draw it out of doore.
Legs are but stumps, and Pharoahs wheels but logs,
And struggling hinders more.
Thousands of things do thee employ
In ruling all
This spacious globe: Angels must have their joy,
Devils their rod, the sea his shore,
The windes their stint: and yet when I did call,
Thou heardst my call, and more.
I have not lost one single tear:
But when mine eyes
Did weep to heav’n, they found a bottle there
(As we have boxes for the poor)
Readie to take them in; yet of a size
That would contain much more.
But after thou hadst slipt a drop
From thy right eye,
(Which there did hang like streamers neare the top
Of some fair church, to show the sore
And bloudie battell which thou once didst trie)
The glass was full and more.
Wherefore I sing. Yet since my heart,
Though press’d, runnes thin;
O that I might some other hearts convert,
And so take up at use good store:
That in thy chest there might be coming in
Both all my praise, and more!
*** This poem is in the public domain,
and may be read in a live-streamed worship service.
A List of Praises
Anne Porter
SNIPPET:
Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.
…
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