A Song – Richard Crashaw
Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace
Sends up my soul to seek thy face,
Thy blessed eyes breed such desire,
I die in love’s delicious Fire.
O love, I am thy Sacrifice.
Be still triumphant, blessed eyes.
Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
Still may behold, though still I die.
Though still I die, I live again;
Still longing so to be still slain,
So gainful is such loss of breath.
I die even in desire of death.
Still live in me this loving strife
Of living Death and dying Life.
For while thou sweetly slayest me
Dead to my self, I live in Thee.
In a way I feel poems like this scarcely need explanation. They seem simple enough to be enjoyed as they are. On the other hand I sometimes wonder whether they have become too foreign for us in our post-Christian world. As a teacher, one of the most frustrating things I have to work against when teaching anything that is even remotely historical is the general unfamiliarity–or if I may be so crude, disregard–of reference points that have until recently been taken for granted. Nowhere is this perhaps more true than in the total ignorance of Christianity. Religion among particularly young people in Sweden today is but a spectre, Christianity so forsaken that it scarcely even elicits a feeling, positive or negative, from your average young man or woman.
And I don’t mean to be snobbish or go off on the younger generation here. My generation was and still is probably just as benighted as they in this regard. For example, I recall being at a school service as an adolescent and having our school chaplain ask our entire year (around 120 students) “What is the name of the first book of the Bible?” Only ONE kid knew the answer. AND IT WASN’T ME! –AT A CHRISTIAN SCHOOL TO BOOT!
And now that I think about it I suppose that I only first came to be genuinely acquainted with Christianity through it’s aesthetic side. Perhaps that is the best way to start, anyhow. For anyone even vaguely interested in the arts one cannot ignore it. One has to engage with it and regardless of one’s religious convictions at least take it very seriously.
I really hope you do not identify with the ignorance I have railed against above, but then I think you really are among a minority. If you do feel unknowledgeable of Christian theology and are afraid you will not fully appreciate the poem above, no need to fear. I will now try and expound the entire Christian doctrine for you.
In the beginning…
Ah, stuff this. It takes too long. Besides, as I earlier suggested, I think Crashaw will do it better than me.
Form
Two stanzas with eight lines in each. The lines are written in iambic tetrameter. The poem is really aptly titled “Song”. Whether there was any music ever written to this I do not know but it is sufficient to read it out loud and delight in the mellifluous cadence of the verse. Note the repetitions and the consonance and assonance that appear in just about every single line.
Analysis
I don’t know if this poem was written on Crashaw’s death-bed but the primary theme of the poem is the reconciliation of life and death. This happens in the union with the divine. The first stanza tends to be more of a supplication–he addresses God and expresses his hope that in death there will be enough left of life to see him:
Be still triumphant, blessed eyes.
Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
Still may behold, though still I die.
The second stanza does not address God. Rather than being an entreaty it is more of a confident declaration by the poet:
Though still I die, I live again;
Still longing so to be still slain,
So gainful is such loss of breath.
One of the most powerful aspects of the poem is how it unites opposing images: life in death, joy in pain, love in anguish. This is English baroque at its baroquest. Look at the examples below:
I die in love’s delicious Fire.
and
Still live in me this loving strife
Of living Death and dying Life.
or how about this one:
while thou sweetly slayest me
Cocky atheists may say this is pure nonsense but I really do believe that poems like this shake the Richard Dawkinses of this world to the soul, though they might not admit it. Perhaps this goes to show the even greater relevance of religious art in our days. It is the last unassailable manifestation of the supernatural left to us.