Rita Dove and Tennyson

Our poets this week are Lord Tennyson and Rita Dove. I found some additional poems by Dove here. The Brackett gives us this book of African American poetry on a search for Dove, so someone should bring that. I trust you to find your own Tennyson. Enjoy!

Also, we're reading T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral this Saturday starting at 2:00. We'll be at Midnight Oil -- on the porch, if weather permits. Feel free to drop by even if you can't stay the whole time.

- J.E.B.

P.S. Here's our poetic selection for this week, two sections of Tennyson's In Memoriam:

XXXI.

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,

And home to Mary’s house return’d,

Was this demanded–if he yearn’d

To hear her weeping by his grave?

‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’

There lives no record of reply,

Which telling what it is to die

Had surely added praise to praise.

From every house the neighbours met,

The streets were fill’d with joyful sound,

A solemn gladness even crown’d

The purple brows of Olivet.

Behold a man raised up by Christ!

The rest remaineth unreveal’d;

He told it not; or something seal’d

The lips of that Evangelist.

XXXII.

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,

Nor other thought her mind admits

But, he was dead, and there he sits,

And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede

All other, when her ardent gaze

Roves from the living brother’s face,

And rests upon the Life indeed.

All subtle thought, all curious fears,

Borne down by gladness so complete,

She bows, she bathes the Saviour’s feet

With costly spikenard and with tears.

Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,

Whose loves in higher love endure;

What souls possess themselves so pure,

Or is there blessedness like theirs?