This blog is all about tradition, and it's time for another of this blog's own beloved traditions-- beloved by me, if nobody else!
I give you that timeless Chrismas classic, St. Robert Southwell's Burning Babe!
Ben Johnson is reputed to have said that he would have gladly destroyed many of his own poems if only he could have written this one. I think it's a little marvel.
As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed
As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns,
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals,
The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.
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I was reading Waugh's work on Edmund Campion, who interestingly used the for analogy a lot also, some people actually looking for buckets of water once when they overheard a sermon. The term used more gently by Southwell but in the same positive spiritual way
ReplyDeleteThat's hilarious! Campion seems to have been a bit of a superstar. I keep meaning to read Waugh's biography of Campion. I find his "cucumber sandwich" prose style uninviting.
DeleteOh dear!- 'for' for 'fire'! Will I cover myself by declaring it the Tudor spelling?
ReplyDelete