28th Dec 2005
Poetry as Prayer
I keep a small volume of poetry handy at work because poems seem to double as prayers. I’m not actually sure when they became totally separate entities, but there is more on this topic at Poetry as Prayer.
Poetry activates the memory, attitude, and perception, and it may be a good beginning or refresher for persons interested in eliciting the peace, power, and the active inner life of prayer. Prayer and poetry originally come from the same place, and much early poetry was sacred. Poetry, like prayer, accompanied ceremonies both at the temple and at the court. They were observances of the priest and king. They had the function of ritualizing, raising, and celebrating a sense of higher life. They were a training and discipline of inner attitude towards public and divine and even supernatural events. They were the developers of the culture.
And here is my favorite Wordsworth poem,
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood, 20
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
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