Spiritual Sunday
As yesterday was Armistice Day or Veterans’ Day (or “Remembrance Day,” as they refer to it here in Slovenia), here’s a poem by World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon. At the beginning, the speaker assumes that God is on his side, but when “fury smites the air,” doubts arise (“Now God is in the strife/ And I must seek him here”). By the end, he wonders whether he will be able to find God again.
The very fact that the soldier is asking signals hope. God loves us most when we are at our lowest. When material clay wonders whether it will ever hear divine music again, that’s when mystic search truly begins.
A Mystic as Soldier
By Siegfried Sassoon
I lived my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God;
By the glory in my heart
Covered and crowned and shod.
Now God is in the strife,
And I must seek Him there,
Where death outnumbers life,
And fury smites the air.
I walk the secret way
With anger in my brain.
O music through my clay,
When will you sound again?