Crossing the Bar

Sunset and evening star,

      And one clear call for me!

And may there be no moaning of the bar,

      When I put out to sea,

 

   But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

      Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

      Turns again home.

 

   Twilight and evening bell,

      And after that the dark!

And may there be no sadness of farewell,

      When I embark;

 

   For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place

      The flood may bear me far,

I hope to see my Pilot face to face

      When I have crost the bar.

Text: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Demeter and Other Poems. London: Macmillan & Co., 1889
Image: Edwin Hayes, Sunset at Sea: From Harlyn Bay, Cornwall, oil on canvas, 1894, Tate

Guye Toye In Memoriam

 

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…nothing to be refused…

1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;

2 Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;

3 Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving:

5 For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.

Text: 2 Timothy 4, KJV
Image: David Teniers the Younger, De slager, oil on canvas, n.d., Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Antica Di Palazzo Corsini, Roma

Mercy

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.

Text: William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I
Image: Alejo Fernández, La Virgen de los Navegantes, oil on panel, c. 1531–36, Casa de Contratación, Sevilla

I like the grey silences…

I like the grey silences under the arches:
Public prayer, funeral processions,
The affecting obligatory rites and requiems at Saint Isaac’s.

I like the priest’s unhurried step,
The winding-sheet’s expansive bodying-forth,
Lent’s Galilean gloom, like an ancient fishing-net,

And smoke of the Old Testament on glowing altars,
And the priest’s orphaned cry. And royal meekness:
Unsullied snow on shoulders, wild purple vestments.

Hagia Sophia and Saint Peter’s – everlasting barns of air and light,
Storehouses of universal goods,
Granaries of the New Testament.

Not to either of you is the spirit drawn in years of grave disaster:
Here, up the wide and sullen steps,
The wolves of tribulation slink; we’ll never betray their tracks:

For the slave is free, having overcome fear,
And in cool granaries, in deep bins,
The grain of whole and perfect faith is stored.

Text: Osip Mandelstam, Selected Poems. London: Penguin Books, 1991
Image: Lucas Cranach the Elder, St. Catherine Altarpiece (central panel), oil on limewood, 1506,
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

The Virgin Soil of Time

Poetry is the plow that turns up time so that the deep layers of time, the black soil, appear on top. There are epochs, however, when mankind, not content with the present, longing for time’s deeper layers, like the plowman, thirsts for the virgin soil of time.

One often hears: that might be good, but it belongs to yesterday. But I say: yesterday hasn’t been born yet.

Text: Osip Mandelstam, Selected Essays, translated by Sidney Monas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977
Image: Pieter Bruegel, De val van Icarus, oil on canvas, c. 1558, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, Brussel

Truth presenting a Mirror to the Vanities of the World

anonymous
oil on canvas, c. 1620–1630
Ashmolean Museum

Autoritratto entro uno specchio convesso

Parmigianino
oil on panel, c. 1523
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien