[Mario Pita]

Originally Posted by Janice D. Soderling

One hundred years since the start of the Great War.

In light of this, here is a prayer by Siegried Sassoon, who survived that war, with the hopes that we will avoid even worse conflicts in our own century in which, sadly, the seeds of more conflicts continue to be sown, such as by robotic drones...

Litany of the Lost
By Siegfried Sassoon

In breaking of belief in human good;
In slavedom of mankind to the machine;
In havoc of hideous tyranny withstood.
And terror of atomic doom foreseen;
Deliver us from ourselves.

Chained to the wheel of progress uncontrolled;
World masterers with a foolish frightened face;
Loud speakers, leaderless and sceptic-souled;
Aeroplane angels, crashed from glory and grace;
Deliver us from ourselves.

In blood and bone contentiousness of nations,
And commerce's competitive re-start.
Armed with our marvellous monkey innovations,
And unregenerate still in head and heart;
Deliver us from ourselves.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Warm thanks to all who responded. I was just torn in two by that Rilke poem which I did not know.

I thought Susan might post this poem by Carol Ann Duffy (from Mean Time), but now I've discovered it is not Monday but already Tuesday and the countdown--at least of hours--has begun, at least here in Sweden. So I'll add this poem myself as I've been close to it since first I read it--long ago, or so it seems.

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer—
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Carol Ann Duffy

[Ann Drysdale]

Because that war and all its successors have taught us nothing:

From G.K. Chesterton

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord ...

[Chris Childers]

That reminded me of this song of Leonard Cohen's. (From memory, and with approximate punctuation):

Come Healing

O gather up the brokenness
and bring it to me now:
the fragrance of those promises
you never dared to vow,
the splinters that you carried,
the cross you left behind--
come, healing of the body.
Come, healing of the mind.
Oh, let the heavens hear it,
the penitential hymn;
come, healing of the spirit.
Come, healing of the limb.

Behold the gates of mercy
in arbitrary space,
and none of us deserving
the cruelty, or the grace.
O solitude of longing
where love has been confined,
come, healing of the body.
Come, healing of the mind.
Oh see the darkness yielding
that tore the light apart--
come, healing of the reason.
Come, healing of the heart.

O troubled dust concealing
an undivided love,
the heart beneath is teaching to
the broken heart above.
Oh let the heavens falter,
let the earth proclaim:
Come, healing of the altar.
Come, healing of the name.

O longing of the branches
to lift the little bud;
o longing of the arteries
to purify the blood.
Oh let the heavens hear it,
the penitential hymn;
come, healing of the spirit.
Come, healing of the limb.

[Gail White]

[quote=Chris Childers;308172]That reminded me of this song of Leonard Cohen's. (From memory, and with approximate punctuation):

Come Healing

O gather up the brokenness
and bring it to me now:
the fragrance of those promises
you never dared to vow,
the splinters that you carried,
the cross you left behind--
come, healing of the body.
Come, healing of the mind.
QUOTE]

And also by Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.

And from Edna Millay:

Logic alone, all love laid by,
Must calm this crazed and plunging star:
Sorrowful news for such as I,
Who hoped, with men just as they are -
Sinful and loving - to secure
A human peace that might endure.

[Roger Slater]

(from Waking Early Sunday Morning, by Robert Lowell)

No weekends for the gods now. Wars
flicker, earth licks its open sores,
fresh breakage, fresh promotions, chance
assassinations, no advance.
Only man thinning out his kind
sounds through the Sabbath noon, the blind
swipe of the pruner and his knife
busy about the tree of life ...

Pity the planet, all joy gone
from this sweet volcanic cone;
peace to our children when they fall
in small war on the heels of small
war – until the end of time
to police the earth, a ghost
orbiting forever lost
in our monotonous sublime.

[Wintaka]

Amazing Grace (in Inuktitut, sung by Susan Aglukark):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtNuELl5he0


K.D. Lang sings Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE


Sister Janet Mead - "The Lord's Prayer" 1973

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd4iJkNCaZ8

-o-

[Andrew Frisardi]

Kyrie

Is man's destructive lust insatiable? There is
Grief in the blow that shatters the innocent face.
Pain blots out clearer sense. And pleasure suffers
The trial thrust of death in even the bride's embrace.

The black catastrophe that can lay waste our worlds
May be unconsciously desired. Fear masks our face;
And tears as warm and cruelly wrung as blood
Are tumbling even in the mouth of our grimace.

How can our hope ring true? Fatality of guilt
And complicated anguish confounds rime and place;
While from the tottering ancestral house an angry voice
Resounds in prophecy. Grant us extraordinary grace,

O spirit hidden in the dark in us and deep,
And bring to light the dream out of our sleep.

--David Gascoyne, from Miserere

[Gregory Dowling]

Here's a perhaps rather uncharacteristic section from Don Juan, Canto 3, stanzas 102-3, and 107-8:

CII
Ave Maria! blesséd be the hour!
xxxxThe time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft
Have felt that moment in its fullest power
xxxxSink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft,
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,
xxxxOr the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft,
And not a breath crept through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.

CIII
Ave Maria! 't is the hour of prayer!
xxxxAve Maria! 't is the hour of love!
Ave Maria! may our spirits dare
xxxxLook up to thine and to thy Son's above!
Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!
xxxxThose downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove—
What though 't is but a pictured image?—strike—
That painting is no idol,—'t is too like.
......
CVII
Oh, Hesperus! thou bringest all good things—
xxxxHome to the weary, to the hungry cheer,
To the young bird the parent's brooding wings,
xxxxThe welcome stall to the o'erlabour'd steer;
Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings,
xxxxWhate'er our household gods protect of dear,
Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest;
Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast.

CVIII
Soft hour! which wakes the wish and melts the heart
xxxxOf those who sail the seas, on the first day
When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
xxxxOr fills with love the pilgrim on his way
As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
xxxxSeeming to weep the dying day's decay;
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns?
Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!

[Sharon Fish Mooney]

Thanks for this thread Janice—a good article on the history of this poem/hymn in the Washington Times—this was written in response to the Civil War and other personal tragedy


http://communities.washingtontimes.c...s-christmas-d/


I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow --1864


I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along the unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Till, ringing, singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

:
Two additional verses not in the hymnals

Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound,
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn,
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!