R.E. Slater - "Thinking Through a Postmodern, Post-Evangelic, Christianity"

Lord of the Harvest

In my spare time this past year-and-a-half I have been working through a newer, more relevant form of theology to help deepen the poems I wish to someday bring to life. Under the web blog title of Relevancy22 I have taken both an academic and contemporary approach to the issues of the day that have unnecessarily narrowed the Christianity I grew up with. One that would write of a wider breadth of faith that is less constricted by conservative boundaries and barriers, and more centered in Jesus, if possible. A kind of post-evangelic Christianity which in its own way is a more moderate, or progressive, form of evangelical Christianity that has become politically unbalanced by rightist, conservative issues which have marginalized the church's message and ministry. And in the process politicized the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to our postmodern, 21st Century, pluralistic, and multi-cultural societies. Societies we struggle to live within given the many incidents of civil warfare and terroristic atrocities witnessed globally between religious, ethnic, and ideological temperaments, rather than seeing the good, the beautiful, the helpful within our human differences.

For myself, I don't pretend to live in the failed eras of yesteryear. Nor to pursue the enlightened, late-modernism issues of the 50s and 60s by revisionistic historical practices (from either side of the political aisle). Mostly because I firmly believe that today's Christian faith can be as vital now as it was fifty years ago without having to artificially create invasive thought-barriers and protective screens to shield the church's faithful from the dialectic events bombarding us in contemporary society. That the life of Jesus was one of action combined with a broadening-out of Jewish theology, itself become constricted and divisive in His day of revelatory illumination. That our actions count as much as our words. That seeing the value of human life is more important than clinging to the traditions of a rich, and faithful church heritage, itself become insular to the criticisms and humanitarian needs of the 21st Century. That the human faith must allow for the majesty and mystery of God while doubting the foibles and wisdom of man. Especially as considering God's love as the prime motivator in our Creator-Redeemer's communion with man (and the cosmos) in everything He has done - and is now doing - within our expanding worlds of knowledge and industry and societal evolution.

Consequently, I have spent many recent days and nights digesting the current affairs of Christian theology and practice, and have re-positioned those issues alongside the thoughts and actions of fellow Christian contemporaries excited by the same possibilities as myself of a newer, more gracious form of faith than presently being discussed or practiced. Along the way I have contributed what articles I could to this emerging discussion through personal insight and experience to help lend vocal support to those fellow "miscreant" theologs that my conservative branch of Christianity has purposely flagellated - or worse, ignored - in its struggle to update itself while embracing the unknown, the feared, the obvious and the unavoidable. So that in my first six months of blogging I began unsure of myself as writer and commentator, but passionate to the burden placed upon my heart, by adopting the pseudonym skinhead (which in hindsight more probably indicated mine own personal de-construction at the time) until feeling surer of myself to hazard my name to that signatory list of evolving practitioners and writers, elocutioners and philosophers, poets and minstrels. I find that I write best in prose but have attempted during that same time to duplicate the more pedantic form of my officiously ranked brethren to help readers along who, with me, wish to investigate the root forms, and basal energies, of their faith. What poetry I have attempted (and in truth it has been very limited) is written hastily to match the temperament of the article of that day's contribution or edition. And usually, I save my best prose for the concluding portions of that day's posting trusting the diligent reader to better appreciate its words when having first read through the opening structures of the ensuing proposition and juxtaposed teaching.

Overall, I have not so much personally blogged as to try to create more of a timeless biblical index to what I consider an emerging, post-modern form of theology and practice in need of definition, sorting-out, and topical discussion. One that can appreciate the contributions of the church's past creeds and confessions, beliefs and practices of yesteryear, but is willing to move beyond any current misconceptions or misrepresentations of the bible. Or even the faith of the faithful seeking cultural acclamations rather than the biblical charter and precedence shown to us by the prophets of earlier times struggling with their own generation of well-meaning religious priests and temple'd guardians. An emerging faith which has come to understand that "the human language is both a problem and a gift" - a problem because we wish to make it so mathematic-like. So precise and formal when it is anything but that (credit the Enlightenment for this effort of definitive syllogism and logistical precision found in Evangelical Christianity's popularly acclaimed systematic theologies of today). And a gift, because through it we may use all the forms of human language and human presence to speak of God - whether poetically, or musically; in chants or in liturgical practice; or non-verbally by our actions, body-language, and symbolic usage (art, film, etc).

But to also understand that "last year's words belong to last year's language, and next year's words are awaiting another voice" as one youth had expressed it to me. And by that means help each generation through its own concerns and frames of reference that must be addressed if it is to evolve into its own habitats, expressions, cares and concerns. That if we don't learn to speak to one another between our generations - from old to young, and young to old - than we will instead speak past one another. To be aware that the Christian faith is meant to be expanded and stretched past any previous thought categories and semantic definitions into newer thought forms and meanings (Jesus showed us that in the Gospels, even as His disciples and the old guard of Judaism struggled with the same). This is because language itself can be both time-bound to the generation it lives within, as well as timeless to the generations to come. To recognize that human language bears a fluidity, or metamorphosing ability, which allows for its continual reconstitution and reconfiguration through the many eras and societies of mankind. So that we may use this uniqueness of human communication that it might breathe and find new lands of discovery and settlement amongst a wider variety of human habitat and mental conception. That how we might "think" in our people groups may be different from how other societies and generations "think" in their regional (and era-specific) people groups. That one is neither right nor wrong in their Christian thoughts and language. And that by this process we may better learn to communicate with one another from within our differing philosophical and cultural reference points without feeling threatened that our Christian faith is under attack every time we do. For me, Emergent Christianity is just this. No more and nor less. And because it is a different animal from the more popular Evangelical Christianity I grew up within, it gets undeservedly bad press because of its different look-and-feel when it is simply learning to speak to younger generations more attuned to their own issues and era-specific needs.

Or, in another sense, we might say "it is of no use to going back to yesterday's voice (or being) because I was a different person then." And by this learn to appreciate and recognize the epistemologic and existential (e/e) growth of a person as experience catches up with the age of our time-worn souls and personhood. I feel I have gone through a minimum of three personal revisions to myself. As example, I began life within a pre-modern enclave of farming families carrying on the deep traditions of their remembered past (from the mid- to late- 1800s) even as they were trying to absorb the industrial, World War 1 and 2 eras of the early- to mid- 1900s. They began as homesteading families to the wilderness areas of West Michigan when black bear and aboriginal natives were still common to the land. My brothers and I were the sixth generation of a farming lifestyle quickly going out of existence (as well as inheritors to a Scandinavian heritage newly come to America from the "Old Country"). And with it, all the ingrained traditions and agrarian practices of the past. We were left out-of-time and out-of-place with a modern day world of public schooling, gas and electricity, TV, music and an encroaching urban lifestyle far more diverse than our own. And when entering university during the upheaval of the Vietnam War era with its civil unrests, angry riots, peace sit-ins, Hippie and LSD drug experimentation, and societal turmoils, I struggled for many years to "adopt" this strange new land I found myself within. But which later caused me to seek a bible school environment which held  the stability I found I needed, along with familiar values to my own remembered background. And yet, over the years I have learned to wean myself away from these (e/e) dependencies and to finally make the leap these past dozen years or so towards a more metropolitan way of thinking. So that in a way, its been my third revision of myself, though more probably, my older soul still lives deep within my fractured being as I have become more accepting of contemporary change. And by nature, am predisposed to understand the change I am confronted with, not being content to simply allow it to haunt my pysche without pursuing its causes, permutations, dissatisfactions, and general disorders.

And yet, this deconstructive process has given me hope that through personal adjustments, whether small or great (however personally painful or disorientating to friends and family), our God may arightly affect both ourselves and succeeding generations to become fuller participants in this precious life we have been given - and daily seem to fail - when coming to embrace it as fully, or completely, as we might. To receive each day with thanksgiving. And to learn to behave ourselves more wisely with one another through the service of our gifts and talents, strengths and weaknesses. And at the last, to allow for the mystery and majesty of life itself through Jesus our Lord and Saviour. That yes, language can be a problem, but it can also be a gift, as we accept the fact that we must grow in our communicational strengths with those unlike ourselves (and perhaps in as much turmoil as we have experienced). And by this communication allow it to bind us into a stronger, healthier society of men and women that might celebrate our differences while seeing those differences as the key to a brighter future not fraught with warfare, hate, fear, and distrust. May this then be our prayer. Our practice. Our desire. And in all things may we learn to share the grace of God with one another. To allow God's grace to become a vital part of our language with one another... and even within our very selves matriculating with age and experience to adopt God's love and forgiveness within our own lives and livelihood. Family structures and friends. Communities, churches, and workplace.

R. E. Slater

October 13, 2012

Relevancy22 - Post-Evangelic Christianity: Topics and Theology

by R.E. Slater

 
http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/

R.E. Slater - The Owl and the Night Wind (a poem)

The Owl and the Night Wind

by R.E. Slater

The Owl spoke to the grey night wind

each evening in the gathering dark.

Each proceeding in twain evensong

twin sepulchers to night's hastening drift.

As night wind wafted in gentle voice

speaking to a sun-whitened moon greyly lit.

Shining pale across evening’s restless shorelines

flashed upon a silvery water’s tumbling wake.

Each praising starlight’s sustaining graces

bourne a summertime’s waning warmths.

Lifted on a weary wind’s ceaseless cares

across shoreline and seaside’s heaving breast.

Across burnished swales of darkened dunes

silent guardians to night's soundless keeps.

Then hushed in the willowy strands of poplars

risen above tipping uneasily their gnarly perch.

Slipping in-and-out of their bedtime chambers

coloured in drowsy repose of dappled silhouette.

Where once was heard a wizened Owl

beneath windblown canopies now saged.

Breathing a settled, stilling silence entombing

no further transgress nor wander its sudden stranger.

Holding fast the feet of it’s tempted traveller

absorbed in night’s fleeting dreams and thoughts.

Transfixed somber evensong’s moonlit sonatas

playing melancholy notes off its beating breast.

Beating time with shoreline's moaning tides

breathlessly composed to the tilted ear.

Where wind and moon, wave and tide, bestirred

temple’d wanderers adrift heavenly altars fixed.

Pressing forward, not by force, nor will,

but by passion’s sweet siren songs alluring.

Each filling evening's restless grace

within hidden solitudes of greying light.

Somberly intoning nocturnal compositions

where once crept things dark and dread.

And there inspiring abiding devotion

before myriad fears fraught and frayed.

Sped a feebled heart’s restless prayers

there betrothed a breathless deep.

Once peering into empty voids and chasms

like breezes bended upon a rising wind.

Hearing but only echoing silence

where no silence had ever been.

Whispering yesterday’s tumbling tomorrows

glancing across quicksilver’d rays of joy.

Becoming one with earth and sky abroad

Inhaling a deepening bliss preserved.

Begun on a solitary vespered eve

glimmering silvery trust and content.

Knowing all will be well no matter the hour

Lifted onto the wings of the grey night wind.

R.E.Slater

orig. July 30, 2012,

rev. Aug 29, Sept 23, 2012; Feb 22, 2013; Jan 16, 2015; Sept 13, 2017

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

R.E. Slater - Expressing Love (a poem)

The quiet beauty of black-lit roses

Expressing Love

by R.E. Slater


From the fullness of the Father,

From the heart of the Son,

From the help of the Spirit,

Comes Love without end.

From the lips of broken hearts,

From the sufferings of torn lives,

From the tears of sin-stained souls,

Comes Love without end.

From the joys each day begets,

From the quiet support of friends,

From the many gifts of grace,

Comes Love without end.

Each day is a new beginning,

Each past a future promise,

Each yesterday my tomorrow,

To Love without end.


- R.E. Slater

July 26, 2012

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications
all rights reserved

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Prometheus Unbound

Lord Byron wrote an earlier poem entitled Prometheus while staying at Diodati, a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva, in 1816. Also staying at a home nearby was Byron's friend, Percy Shelley. Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound a few years later. This is Shelley's poetic interpretation of the Greek Tragedy, Prometheia, by Aeschylus, and remains one of poetry's favorites.

Related - Lord Byrohn's Prometheus


From Wikipedia -

Prometheus Unbound is a four-act lyrical drama by Percy Bysshe Shelley first published in 1820, concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus and his suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by the classical Prometheia, a trilogy of plays attributed to Aeschylus in Antiquity. Shelley's play concerns Prometheus' release from captivity, but unlike Aeschylus' version, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Jupiter (Zeus). Instead, Jupiter is overthrown, which allows Prometheus to be released.

Shelley's play is closet drama, meaning it was not intended to be produced on the stage. In the tradition of Romantic poetry, Shelley wrote for the imagination, intending his play's stage to reside in the imaginations of his readers. However, the play is filled with suspense, mystery and other dramatic effects that make it, in theory, performable.



Shelley's complete play in all four acts - http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/prometheus.html



(exerpt) PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

By Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792–1822

SCENE. A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.

Prometheus

Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits

But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds

Which Thou and I alone of living things

Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth

Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou

Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,

And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,

With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.

Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,

Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,

O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.

Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,

And moments aye divided by keen pangs

Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,

Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:—

More glorious far than that which thou surveyest

From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!

Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame

Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here

Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,

Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,

Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?

I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,

Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,

Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,

Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears

Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains

Eat with their burning cold into my bones.

Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips

His beak in poison not his own, tears up

My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,

The ghastly people of the realm of dream,

Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged

To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds

When the rocks split and close again behind:

While from their loud abysses howling throng

The genii of the storm, urging the rage

Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.

And yet to me welcome is day and night,

Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,

Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs

The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead

The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom

—As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim—

Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood

From these pale feet, which then might trample thee

If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.

Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin

Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!

How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,

Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,

Not exultation, for I hate no more,

As then ere misery made me wise. The curse

Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,

Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist

Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!

Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,

Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept

Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,

Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!

And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings

Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,

As thunder, louder than your own, made rock

The orbèd world! If then my words had power,

Though I am changed so that aught evil wish

Is dead within; although no memory be

Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!

What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.


Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822



About this Poem

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174403

Poet - Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792–1822

Poet's Region - England

School / Period - Romantic

Subjects - Mythology & Folklore, Greek & Roman Mythology

Poetic Terms - Blank Verse

Reviews

An analysis of the play by Percy Bysshe Shelley -
http://www.theatredatabase.com/19th_century/prometheus_unbound.html

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_Unbound_(Shelley)

Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts.

Introductory Note.

http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel1160.html

AUDISNE HÆC, AMPHIARÆ, SUB TERRAM ABDITE?

Prometheus Unbound best combines the various elements of Shelley's genius in their most complete expression, and unites harmoniously his lyrically creative power of imagination and his 'passion for reforming the world.' It is the fruit of an outburst of poetic energy under the double stimulus of his enthusiastic Greek studies, begun under Peacock's influence, and of his delight in the beauty of Italy, whither he had removed for health and rest. It marks his full mastery of his powers. It is, not less than Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam, a poem of the moral perfection of man; and, not less than Alastor and Epipsychidion, a poem of spiritual ideality. He was himself in love with it: 'a poem of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted and perhaps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it,' he writes to Ollier; and again, 'a poem in my best style, whatever that may amount to,... the most perfect of my productions,' and 'the best thing I ever wrote;' and finally he says, 'Prometheus Unbound, I must tell you, is my favorite poem; I charge you, therefore, especially to pet him and feed him with fine ink and good paper.... I think, if I can judge by its merits, the Prometheus cannot sell beyond twenty copies.' Nor did he lose his affection for it. Trelawny records him as saying, 'If that is not durable poetry, tried by the severest test, I do not know what is. It is a lofty subject, not inadequately treated, and should not perish with me.'... 'My friends say my Prometheus is too wild, ideal, and perplexed with imagery. It may be so. It has no resemblance to the Greek drama. It is original; and cost me severe mental labor. Authors, like mothers, prefer the children who have given them most trouble.'

The drama was begun in the summer-house of his garden at Este about September, 1818, and the first Act had been finished as early as October 8; it was apparently laid aside, and again taken up at Rome in the spring of 1819, where, under the circumstances described in the preface, the second and third Acts were added, and the work, in its first form, was thus completed by April 6. The fourth Act was an afterthought, and was composed at Florence toward the end of the year. The whole was published, with other poems, in the summer of 1820.

The following extracts from Mrs. Shelley's long and admirable note show the progress of the poem during its composition, the atmosphere of its creation, and its general scheme:

'The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of nature and art in that divine land.

'The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical Dramas. One was the story of Tasso: of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The other was one founded on the book of Job, which he never abandoned in idea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was the Prometheus Unbound. The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Æschylus filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and demigods--such fascinated the abstract imagination of Shelley.

'We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that interval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley meditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bogni di Lucca he translated Plato's Symposium. But though he diversified his studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a bright and beautiful spring, he gave up his whole time to the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he mentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a letter, with that poetry, and delicacy, and truth of description, which rendered his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and interest.

'At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.

'The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human species was, that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity; God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,

'"Brought death into the world and all our woe."

Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on, was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all, even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope, and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of good. Such he had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture and set him free, and Thetis was married to Peleus the father of Achilles.

'Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views. The son, greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone Evil and bring back a happier reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures centuries of torture, till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will flow, espouses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the Oceanides, is the wife of Prometheus--she was, according to other mythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the Benefactor of Mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy union. In the fourth Act, the poet gives further scope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms of creation, such as we know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty Parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth--the guide of our planet through the realms of sky--while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere.

'Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays on the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations and remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.

'More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery. Shelley loved to idealize the real--to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind....

'Through the whole Poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world....

'The charm of the Roman climate helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn before; and as he wandered among the ruins, made one with nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own.'

Lord Byron - Prometheus

Titan! to whose immortal eyes

The sufferings of mortality,

Seen in their sad reality,

Were not as things that gods despise;

What was thy pity's recompense?

A silent suffering, and intense;

The rock, the vulture, and the chain,

All that the proud can feel of pain,

The agony they do not show,

The suffocating sense of woe,

Which speaks but in its loneliness,

And then is jealous lest the sky

Should have a listener, nor will sigh

Until its voice is echoless.

Titan! to thee the strife was given

Between the suffering and the will,

Which torture where they cannot kill;

And the inexorable Heaven,

And the deaf tyranny of Fate,

The ruling principle of Hate,

Which for its pleasure doth create

The things it may annihilate,

Refus'd thee even the boon to die:

The wretched gift Eternity

Was thine—and thou hast borne it well.

All that the Thunderer wrung from thee

Was but the menace which flung back

On him the torments of thy rack;

The fate thou didst so well foresee,

But would not to appease him tell;

And in thy Silence was his Sentence,

And in his Soul a vain repentance,

And evil dread so ill dissembled,

That in his hand the lightnings trembled.

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,

To render with thy precepts less

The sum of human wretchedness,

And strengthen Man with his own mind;

But baffled as thou wert from high,

Still in thy patient energy,

In the endurance, and repulse

Of thine impenetrable Spirit,

Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,

A mighty lesson we inherit:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;

And Man in portions can foresee

His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,

And his sad unallied existence:

To which his Spirit may oppose

Itself—and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,

Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter'd recompense,

Triumphant where it dares defy,

And making Death a Victory.


Lord Byron (George Gordon), 1788–1824

Lord Byron wrote this poem while staying at Diodati, a villa on the shore of Lake Geneva, in 1816. Also staying at a home nearby was Byron's friend, Percy Shelley. Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound a few years later. This is Byron's poetic interpretation of the Greek Tragedy, Prometheus Bound, by Aeschylus, and remains one of poetry's favorites.

 

Related - Shelley's Prometheus Unbound

 

 

 

About this Poem

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173099

Poet - Lord Byron (George Gordon), 1788–1824

Poet's Region - England

School / Period - Romantic

Subjects - Religion, Heroes & Patriotism, Mythology & Folklore, God & the Divine, Greek & Roman Mythology

Poetic Terms - Allusion, Rhymed Stanza



 

Several Poems by Archibald MacLeish

End of the World

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.

Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell

Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.

She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered.

Why should she? Her religion is to tell
By rote her rosary of perfect answers.
Metaphysics she can leave to man:
She never wakes at night in heaven or hell

Staring at darkness. In her holy cell
There is no darkness ever: the pure candle
Burns, the beads drop briskly from her hand.

Who dares to offer Her the curled sea shell!
She will not touch it!--knows the world she sees
Is all the world there is! Her faith is perfect!

And still he offers the sea shell . . .

What surf
Of what far sea upon what unknown ground
Troubles forever with that asking sound?
What surge is this whose question never ceases?

The Snowflake which is Now and Hence Forever

Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?

Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish,
What would he make of the sole, clean, clear
Leap of the salmon that has disappeared?

To be, yes!--whether they like it or not!
But not to last when leap and water are forgotten,
A plank of standard pinkness in the dish.

They also live
Who swerve and vanish in the river.

Two Poems from the War

Oh, not the loss of the accomplished thing!
Not dumb farewells, nor long relinquishment
Of beauty had, and golden summer spent,
And savage glory of the fluttering
Torn banners of the rain, and frosty ring
Of moon-white winters, and the imminent
Long-lunging seas, and glowing students bent
To race on some smooth beach the gull's wing:

Not these, nor all we've been, nor all we've loved,
The pitiful familiar names, had moved
Our hearts to weep for them; but oh, the star
The future is! Eternity's too wan
To give again that undefeated, far,
All-possible irradiance of dawn.

*

Like moon-dark, like brown water you escape,
O laughing mouth, O sweet uplifted lips.
Within the peering brain old ghosts take shape;
You flame and wither as the white foam slips
Back from the broken wave: sometimes a start,
A gesture of the hands, a way you own
Of bending that smooth head above your heart,--
Then these are varied, then the dream is gone.

Oh, you are too much mine and flesh of me
To seal upon the brain, who in the blood
Are so intense a pulse, so swift a flood
Of beauty, such unceasing instancy.
Dear unimagined brow, unvisioned face,
All beauty has become your dwelling place.

An Eternity

There is no dusk to be,
There is no dawn that was,
Only there's now, and now,
And the wind in the grass.

Days I remember of
Now in my heart, are now;
Days that I dream will bloom
White the peach bough.

Dying shall never be
Now in the windy grass;
Now under shooken leaves
Death never was.