And the last sonnet I'm going to read
is a poem that has haunted me for--
tried to figure it out, something like 35 years.
It has been a favorite poem of mine since a friend,
Steve Orlen-- who was my teacher at the time--
gave it to me.
And more recently, it has become kind of a guiding star
aesthetically for my writing.
So I love it a great deal.
And many of you will know it, it's
by George Herbert, the 17th century devotional poet.
And it is a collection.
It's titled "Prayer," and I think of it
as a series of definitions accumulating
towards some sense, very complex,
of the possibilities of prayer.
"Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
the soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
the Christian plummet sounding heav'n and Earth engine against
th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r, reversed thunder,
Christ-side-piercing spear, the six-days world transposing
in an hour, a kind of tune, that all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
exalted manna, gladness of the best, Heaven in ordinary,
man well drest, the milky way, the bird of Paradise,
church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
the land of spices; something understood."
Thank you very much.