So I Will Praise Him in the Night
I recently sent this to a friend in Toronto, so I thought I might share this with y’all here. May the God-centered words be a blessing to you, especially in your times of “night”.
The plans of God bring ebb and flow –
His wisdom thus ordains it.
Prosperity to want may go,
As His good hands arrange it.
Both day and night dispense His grace;
Both work to serve His pleasure.
By day we know the glorious Face
At night we learn to treasure.We err to think the darkness bad,
When shadows mask our knowing,
For there refreshing dew is had
That keeps the flowers growing.
The waxing and the waning moon
Both work to mark the season.
The winter dawn and dusk of June
Alike display His reason.Should we then seek that He explain
The circle of His blessing?
Our daily rhythms here maintain
Great patterns there expressing.
For sorrows come until the Day
When Night itself will vanish,
While Wisdom works its perfect way,
And Light, will darkness, banish.The happy soul is then content
To know that He is faithful,
And through each difficult event
Remembers to be grateful.
For God commands each circumstance
To serve those of His calling.
His loving Hand of providence
Will keep the faint from falling.So I will praise Him in the night,
This globe of sorrows surely turns.
See there His stars of promise bright;
Behold, the light of dawn returns.
–Kevin Hartnett, August 2007
Beauty is truth, truth beauty
What is it about “beauty is truth”?
Is it true — or is is just poetry?
It’s from a poem titled “Ode On A Grecian Urn” written by John Keats in May, 1819, when he was about 24. Keats was one of the principal poets in the English Romantic movement. The urn is apparently decorated with a picture of a youth playing a flute in a pastoral setting and a young man chasing a young woman around the urn. She may well wish him to catch her–but the important thing is that on the urn, the music is silent and the chase, perpetual.
And of course, it’s worth remembering here that the function of an urn is to hold for eternity the ashes of the dead.
The poem begins with some questions about the figures pictured on the urn, then moves to this statement: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter. . . . / Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss. . . . / Forever wilt thou love and she be fair!”
The poem ends with these lines, apparently addressed to the urn itself:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
The words in question — “beauty is truth” — appear to be uttered by the urn, as if it were some sort of oracle–or maybe in the way a shell speaks for the sea when you hold it to your ear.
Unfortunately, the quotation marks appeared in the first published edition, in 1820, but not in any of five other reproductions of the poem made in that year. So no one seems to know now whether the quoted words are spoken by the urn and the rest by Keats or a persona, or whether the persona speaks all of the words. Nor is there much agreement as to whether the lines express a universal truth — or are just poetic blather.
Keats himself apparently never explained his intentions. He died of tuberculosis in 1821, only about eight years after beginning his career as a poet.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats, 1795–1821
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost (1874–1963)
