Session 4

The Canticle of the Creatures St. Francis of Assisi
(early 13th century)

Most High, all-powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, and the honour, and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no human is worthy to mention Your name.

Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures, especially Brother Sun,
Who is the day and through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour;
and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
   in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful. 

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
   and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather,
through whom You give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
   through whom You light the night,
and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth,
   who sustains and governs us,
and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love,
   and bear infirmity and tribulation.
Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, shall they be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
   from whom no one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those whom death will find in Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.

Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks
and serve Him with great humility.

Amen.

Septuagesima Sunday (1827) John Keble

The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made.  Romans 1:20.

There is a book, who runs may read,
   Which heavenly truth imparts,
And all the lore its scholars need,
   Pure eyes and Christian hearts.

The works of God above, below,
   Within us and around,
Are pages in that book, to show
   How God Himself is found.

The glorious sky embracing all
   Is like the Maker’s love,
Wherewith encompass’d, great and small
   In peace and order move.

The Moon above, the Church below,
   A wondrous race they run,
But all their radiance, all their glow,
   Each borrows of its Sun.

The Saviour lends the light and heat
   That crowns His holy hill;
The saints, like stars, around His seat
   Perform their courses still.

The saints above are stars in heaven—
   What are the saints on earth?
Like trees they stand whom God has given,2
   Our Eden’s happy birth.

Faith is their fix’d unswerving root,
   Hope their unfading flower,
Fair deeds of charity their fruit,
   The glory of their bower.

The dew of heaven is like Thy grace,3
   It steals in silence down;
But where it lights, this favoured place
   By richest fruits is known.

One Name above all glorious names
   With its ten thousand tongues
The everlasting sea proclaims.
   Echoing angelic songs.

The raging Fire,4 the roaring Wind,
   Thy boundless power display;
But in the gentler breeze we find
   Thy Spirit’s viewless way.5

Two worlds are ours: ’tis only Sin
   Forbids us to descry
The mystic heaven and earth within,
   Plain as the sea and sky.

Thou, who hast given me eyes to see
   And love this sight so fair,
Give me a heart to find out Thee,
   And read Thee everywhere.

In Response to a Question:     “What Does the Earth Say?” (1961)

William Stafford

The earth says have a place, be what that place
requires; hear the sound the birds imply
and see as deep as ridges go behind
each other. (Some people call their scenery flat,
their only pictures framed by what they know:
I think around them rise a riches and a loss
too equal for their chart — but absolutely tall.)

The earth says every summer have a ranch
that’s minimum: one tree, one well, a landscape
that proclaims a universe—sermon
of the hills, hallelujah mountain,
highway guided by the way the world is tilted,
reduplication of mirage, flat evening:
a kind of ritual for the wavering.

The earth says where you live wear the kind
of color that your life is (grey shirt for me)
and by listening with the same bowed head that sings
draw all things into one song, join
the sparrow on the lawn, and row that easy
way, the rage without met by the wings
within that guide you anywhere the wind blows.

Listening, I think that’s what the earth says.

Part 3: Creation and the Divine Order Reflected in the Natural World

‘The Tyger’ by William Blake (1794)

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,  In the forests of the night;  What immortal hand or eye,  Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies.  Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire? 

And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet? 

What the hammer? what the chain,  In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp? 

When the stars threw down their spears  And water’d heaven with their tears:  Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

Tyger Tyger burning bright,  In the forests of the night:  What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? 

(Some poets explore nature through symbolism. Poets use symbols to represent abstract ideas. For example, the tree is often a symbol of life, while the ocean is often a symbol of the subconscious mind. In “The Tyger,” William Blake uses the tiger as a symbol of the destructive power of nature. He says that the tiger is “burning bright” and “fearful symmetry.” This symbolism suggests that the natural world is both beautiful and dangerous.)

‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer ‘ by Walt Whitman (the 19th century)

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

(The poem emphasizes the significance of experiencing nature to access deeper knowledge.) 

‘In Blackwater Woods’ by Mary Oliver (2011)

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are  bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now.
Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know.
To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

(Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Darkling Thrush” also uses metaphor to explore the beauty and power of nature. In this poem, the thrush is a symbol of hope and new beginnings. The thrush sings in the midst of winter, when the world is dark and cold. This suggests that even in the darkest of times, there is always hope for the future.)

‘He Sails at The Top’ by William Darnell Sr (2024)

He sets up His mast upon His raft. He sailed the tops and groves of the trees in granting There He goes through the forest, soaring His craft He provides energy to the wild as the swift wind passes. The freshness of the timbers climbing, When they flourish where they’re standing The aroma of wood is the best for understanding That should have it to vend banded we invoke. We notice vines developing, surrounding the trees, Sustaining one another breathing in this sphere of unity We concede that we’re learning from them by will A loving connection between these trees and plants The woodlands breathe with peace and with sense. A tree’s liveliness needs sustaining credence. For its essence, it rightly deserves to be pleading As if they were holding hands, the trees and vines It shows us they have the capability of a love within residing. The trees and different characters thereof, An advanced tier of life to replenish our air above An intelligent, complex organism of vitality We discover more about this reality-based formality. 

Li Bai (Li Po) 8th century China

You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.

Session 2 Poems

“A Birthday” by Christina Rossetti (1857)

My heart is like a singing bird

                  Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

                  Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

                  That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

                  Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

                  Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

                  And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

                  In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

                  Is come, my love is come to me.

“Spring” by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1880)

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.  

“The Cloud” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under,

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast;

And all the night ’tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits;

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea;

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead;

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of Heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,

And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow;

The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist Earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of Earth and Water,

And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.

For after the rain when with never a stain

The pavilion of Heaven is bare,

And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain,

Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

“The Flower” by George Herbert (1633)

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;

         To which, besides their own demean,

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.

                   Grief melts away

                   Like snow in May,

         As if there were no such cold thing.

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone

         Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown,

                   Where they together

                   All the hard weather,

         Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

         These are thy wonders, Lord of power,

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell

         And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

                   We say amiss

                   This or that is:

         Thy word is all, if we could spell.

         Oh that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!

         Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;

                   Nor doth my flower

                   Want a spring shower,

         My sins and I joining together.

         But while I grow in a straight line,

Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,

         Thy anger comes, and I decline:

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone

                   Where all things burn,

                   When thou dost turn,

         And the least frown of thine is shown?

         And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

         I once more smell the dew and rain,

And relish versing. Oh, my only light,

                   It cannot be

                   That I am he

         On whom thy tempests fell all night.

         These are thy wonders, Lord of love,

To make us see we are but flowers that glide;

         Which when we once can find and prove,

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;

                   Who would be more,

                   Swelling through store,

         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

 —