Poetry in praise of God seems to be as old as time itself. The book of Psalms, one of the most popular books of the Bible, was put together around 537 BC, although some of the psalms date from much earlier times. The writing of history is also an ancient art, with The Histories of Herodotus being produced around 450 – 420 BC, while heroic narratives, Romances, date from Medieval times. It was much, much later, in 1719, that Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe, marking the beginnings of realistic fiction as a literary genre; novels have entertained us only quite recently. A novelist is god-like in his or her control of a plot. Many great novels are steeped in Biblical references. A novel may explore the necessity and complexity of morality; or it may offer a sense of life having a larger meaning and coherence.But are novels inspired by a desire to praise a God? Do they express unadulterated joy, delight and wonder? A novel may be written so beautifully the prose approaches poetry, but a novel is, fundamentally, different from a poem; is it not? Is a poem able to have a deeper emotional power, more akin to music, than what strikes us as novel in a novel? A brilliant novelist can assume many different voices to bring the cast of characters to life, yet a poem is often powerful for being deeply personal. Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that great poets have often written profoundly searching spiritual works, meditations, prayers, reflections, and songs of praise. The list of English greats is long, to name some: Edmund Spenser, John Donne, George Herbert, John Milton, Isaac Watts, William Cowper, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, G K Chesterton, TS Eliot and RS Thomas.
In this context, it is good to remember Gerard Manley Hopkins poem ‘Pied Beauty’:
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
As the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote: ‘The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.’ Thankfully, poets have given us the words to praise - Him.
Sandra Robinson
Associate Director
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