Backward Mutters

Category: poetry

  • On Dante’s Purgatorio

    “Press him [the one pontificating Dante without knowing the whole], rather, for an intelligent opinion of the Ship of Souls and Peter’s Gate; on Buonconte, Sapia, and Arnaut Daniel; on the Prayer of the Proud, the theology of Free Judgement, Dante’s three Dreams, the Sacred Forest, and te symbolism of…

  • Merry Meeting

    I just learned that Tolkein and Lewis first met on May 11, 1926 my birthday–albeit not 1926. Alan Jacobs in his book on Lewis, The Narnian, writes of Lewis’ first impression of Tolkein in this way, “…the two young dons talked for the first time. In his diary entry…Lewis contrives…

  • "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers"

    Here’s the text: What’s he that wishes so?    My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;    If we are mark’d to die, we are enow    To do our country loss; and if to live,    The fewer men, the greater share of honour.    God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man…

  • Confession: Water of Life

    I’ve been considering writing out prayers for our congregation’s worship service. Here’s this Sunday’s Confession. Our Heavenly Father, forgive us our sin. Instead of turning to you who is the fount of every blessing, we have dug cisterns of our own when we were thirsty. We have, in our stubbornness,…

  • "The Pulley" by George Herbert

    When God at first made man,Having a glasse of blessings standing by;Let us (said he) poure on him all we can:Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,Contract into a span. So strength first made a way;Then beautie flow’d, then wisdome, honour, pleasure:When almost all was out, God made a stay,Perceiving…