Coming Home Like a Lamb to the Fold

John Gibb, "Shades Of Evening, The Estuary" (1880)

John Gibb, “Shades Of Evening, The Estuary” (1880)

Spiritual Sunday

I’ve been reading A Sacrifice of Praise, an anthology of Christian poetry from the middle ages to the 20th century. In the process, I’ve discovered and come to appreciate the poetry of British poet Ruth Pitter (1897-1992).

In her time Pitter was appreciated by figures like Hilaire Belloc, who talked about her “classical spirit,” and C. S. Lewis. “The Estuary” is a beautiful poem that only gradually reveals itself to be a poem about faith. In some ways, it can be read as a response to Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”:

The Estuary

By Ruth Pitter

Light, stillness and peace lie on the broad sands, 
On the salt-marshes the sleep of the afternoon. 
The sky’s immaculate; the horizon stands 
Steadfast, level and clear over the dune.

There are voices of children, musical and thin 
Not far, nor near, there in the sandy hills; 
As the light begins to wane, so the tide comes in, 
The shallow creek at our feet silently fills:

And silently, like sleep to the weary mind, 
Silently, like the evening after the day, 
The big ship bears inshore with the inshore wind, 
Changes her course, and comes on up through the bay,

Rolling along the fair deep channel she knows, 
Surging along, right on top of the tide. 
I can see the flowery wreath of foam at the bows, 
The long bright wash streaming away from her side:

I can see the flashing gulls that follow her in, 
Screaming and tumbling, like children wildly at play, 
The sea-born crescent arising, pallid and thin, 
The flat safe twilight shore shelving away.

Whether remembered or dreamed, read of or told, 
So it has dwelt with me, so it shall dwell with me ever: 
The brave ship coming home like a lamb to the fold, 
Home with the tide into the mighty river.

The image of “lamb to the fold,” of course, sees the ship as a soul returning to Jesus, the good shepherd, who is represented as the tide of a mighty river.

There is no such reassurance in “Dover Beach,” where the tide of faith is ebbing, not flowing, and where ignorant armies clash by night:

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

In Pitter’s vision, one can hear the voices of children. The poem is infused with “the peace that passeth all understanding,” and renewed faith comes like “sleep to the weary mind.”

Added note: An earlier version of this post included a typo that appeared in the anthology. “The fight begins to wane” should be “the light begins to wane.” Thanks to my mother for pointing it out. And here I thought it was an allusion to the Matthew Arnold line about ignorant armies clashing by night. (Pitter’s night promises to be much more peaceful.)

The mistake, which casts some doubts on the anthology itself (this isn’t the first mistake I’ve found in it), reminds me of the great American scholar F. O. Matthiessen’s analysis of a passage at the end of Melville’s White Jacket. The protagonist falls overboard and brushes against “a great soiled fish” and Matthiessen talks of Melville’s brilliant use of “soiled” to capture the darkness the sailor encounters:

[H]ardly anyone but Melville could have created the shudder that results from calling this frightening vagueness some “soiled fish of the sea.” The discordia concors, the unexpected linking of the medium of cleanliness with filth, could only have sprung from an imagination that had apprehended the terrors of the deep, of the immaterial deep as well as the physical.

The only problem was that “soiled” was a typesetter’s error and the word Melville had actually written was “coiled.”

Mistakes like this should keep us literary scholars humble. At least Matthiessen was tuned in to Melville enough to know that something about the phrase stood out.

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