[NPM] Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying, / Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!

Holy cats am I behind on the poetry postings. Here's the poem for this past Saturday, which was Easter Saturday. I thought this appropriate.

"The Dying Christian To His Soul"
Alexander Pope

Vital spark of heav'nly flame,
Quit, oh, quit, this mortal frame!
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
Oh, the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

Hark! they whisper; Angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away.
What is this absorbs me quite,
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my Soul! can this be Death?

The world recedes; it disappears;
Heav'n opens on my eyes; my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy Victory?
O Death! where is thy Sting?

[NPM] God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent /With oil of gladness...

This is for Sunday.

"Easter Communion"
Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu's; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

( And a special Easter bonus... )

[NPM] Love's a tyrant here on earth, not easy to gainsay...

Here's Monday's poem. It's a relatively anonymous medieval poem. (For that alone you must love medieval poetry, where relative anonymity is a possibility.) Here's what the translator and explicator, Brian Stone, says in his Medieval English Verse (Penguin 1964):

[The poem] is a full working of a favourite motif, the definition of love, and is interesting for the indication it gives of an early approximation to standard ballad metre.

Love is soft and love is sweet, and speaks in accents fair;
Love is mighty agony, and love is might care;
Love is utmost ecstasy and love is keen to dare;
Love is wretched misery; to live with, it's despair.

Love's a lottery, mars your luck or gives you pleasures gay;
Love is lecherous, love is loose, and likely to betray;
Love's a tyrant here on earth, not easy to gainsay;
Love throughout this land of ours sends faithful ones astray.

Love's a stern and valiant knight, strong astride a steed;
Love's a thing that pleasures every longing woman's need;
Love persists and keeps its heat like any glowing gleed;
Love puts girls in floods of tears, they rage and cry indeed.

Love maintains his bailiwick in every path and street;
Love can wet with tears the cheek of any maiden sweet;
Love by chance brings misery inflamed with fever heat;
Love is wise and love is wary, wants its way complete.

Love's the softest, sweetest thing that in the heart may sleep;
Love is craft, and for its woes is well equipped to weep;
Love is false and love is eager, forces folk to long;
Love is foolish, love is firm, and love is comfort strong:
Love's a marvel to the man who treats of it in song.

Love is weal and love is woe, in gladness can maintain us;
Love is life and love is death, and love can well sustain us.

If love had strength for suffering as first it has when keen,
Then love would be the worthiest thing the world had ever seen;
But this is what is sung of it, and so it's ever been:
'Love begins in mighty pain and ends in grief and spleen,
With noble lady, steady wife, with virgin or with queen!'

[NPM] ...All that meets the eye / Is sky and stars, stars and sky.

And we come at last to today.

"Science-fiction Cradlesong"
C. S. Lewis

By and by Man will try
To get out into the sky,
Sailing far beyond the air
From Down and Here to Up and There.
Stars and sky, sky and stars
Make us feel the prison bars.

Suppose it done. Now we ride
Closed in steel, up there, outside
Through our port-holes see the vast
Heaven-scape go rushing past.
Shall we? All that meets the eye
Is sky and stars, stars and sky.

Points of light with black between
Hang like a painted scene
Motionless, no nearer there
Than on Earth, everywhere
Equidistant from our ship.
Heaven has given us the slip.

Hush, be still. Outer space
Is a concept, not a place.
Try no more. Where we are
Never can be sky or star.
From prison, in a prison, we fly;
There's no way into the sky.