Claude Monet, The White Water Lillies
Spiritual Sunday
Last week I wrote about how my friend Alan, beset with cancer, has been exploring the meaning of love as his health fails. Here’s a beautiful George Herbert poem that captures Alan’s love for creation, his sadness that he must leave it, and (perhaps) his sense that his love may transcend death. Even though the final image is of the world turning to coal—this is an image we might have of death—the love we have for this world seems somehow of a different order. Our sweet and virtuous soul that thrills to beauty does not seem to be a material thing. How can it then be transient?
Virtue
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright!
The bridal of the earth and sky–
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season’d timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
