I want to share a Lent reflection on peace with you. You know how, when you read something that moves you and causes you to ponder, you need to tell someone. You’re that someone for me today.
Why This Poem…er, Reflection
Okay, I figured some might not read past the title of the post if I used the word “poem” in it Lots of people regard poetry inaccessible or most certainly uninteresting. Yet…I think this poem might surprise you.
Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of my favorite poets. Even though he lived from 1844-1889, his poetry is startling because it can sound contemporary. He had a sense of rhythm in his writing that was far different from his contemporaries, like William Wordsworth. His poetry reads like it should be performed so listeners can hear the playful patterns he creates through the words and the pacing of the lines.
Hopkins became a Jesuit priest as a young man. Already a poet, he struggled all his life to reconcile the simplicity of a priest’s life and the beautiful embroidery of the verse that came so naturally to him. He was assigned to new posts often, and while his poetic spirit loved nature, he often ended up in industrial locales, which he found “museless.”
Maybe because of those life contradictions, his poems revel in the beauty of a relationship with God. And that is what this poem does eloquently.
How to Read a Poem
Skip this section if poetry is your jam, but if you’re skeptical, before you launch into the poem I’m sharing, approach it a bit differently than you would prose.
- Read slowly. Finishing a poem is not the point: Savoring the journey is. Let the words settle in your soul and enjoy the rhythms as if these were a song’s lyrics.
- Ask yourself as you read: What speaks to me? What do I relate to? What surprises me? What do I feel by the time I finish the poem?
- Don’t try to understand everything in the poem. Read it to capture the essence of the story the poet is telling you. Trying to understand everything is what can bog down a reader. Some people love to dig in, but that’s for later, not in the first read.
- A poem is a gem, with many facets that the poet is turning over in his hand so the light catches the facets and then they disappear in shadow. Understanding that helps one to appreciate poetry.
The Poem “Peace”
I discovered a Lent book of readings in which the author, Carys Walsh, reflects on a different Hopkins poem each day. While I am always drawn to Hopkins’s poetry, I never took the time to read 41 of them assembled together with a writer’s thoughts on them.
Which is how I came to read a new poem for me “Peace.”
When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
A Lent Reflection on Peace
There you have it, a sermon in 11 lines. The peace we pine for and even momentarily experience is fleeting and readily flies away or sits on a branch with its wings shut. But real peace comes after we make ourselves at home with patience. Out of that patience “plumes” peace. But it’s not the piecemeal peace we thought we longed for but a working peace. As the author of the reflections writes: “This is peace as an active presence, come to do the ‘work’ of bringing something to birth within us–to ‘brood and sit’ as we are shaped by the love of God.
What parts of the poem especially speak to you? What word choices do you admire? What surprised you?
Oddly enough, for someone who’s written about 7000 Shakespearean sonnets, Hopkins’ poem is inaccessible to me!
It’s not ‘professional jealousy’; I don’t see myself as a poet, more a writer of advertising jingles, set to reinforce a point someone else had already made. No deep thoughts here.
But on several rereads, Hopkins does put me in mind of a jingle, and I hope it’s okay that I share it.
One’s mind is kept in perfect peace,
that mind that’s ‘stayed on Thee’,
and in this way one gains release
from base mortality.
His peace is given unto you,
a peace from far beyond
this world and all the work you do,
and His word is His bond.
He will reshape you to His heart,
if this you will allow,
that one day you can play your part
(though now you don’t know how)
in His Kingdom yet to be,
the Kingdom of His victory.
Two different views of peace and two different types of poems. There’s room for all at the Cross. For me, I experience peace much more along the lines Hopkins depicted.