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And the last sonnet
I'm going to read

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is a poem that has
haunted me for--

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tried to figure it out,
something like 35 years.

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It has been a favorite poem
of mine since a friend,

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Steve Orlen-- who was
my teacher at the time--

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gave it to me.

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And more recently, it has
become kind of a guiding star

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aesthetically for my writing.

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So I love it a great deal.

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And many of you
will know it, it's

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by George Herbert, the 17th
century devotional poet.

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And it is a collection.

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It's titled "Prayer,"
and I think of it

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as a series of
definitions accumulating

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towards some sense,
very complex,

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of the possibilities of prayer.

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"Prayer the church's
banquet, angel's age,

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God's breath in man
returning to his birth,

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the soul in paraphrase,
heart in pilgrimage,

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the Christian plummet sounding
heav'n and Earth engine against

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th' Almighty, sinner's
tow'r, reversed thunder,

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Christ-side-piercing spear,
the six-days world transposing

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in an hour, a kind of tune,
that all things hear and fear;

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Softness, and peace, and
joy, and love, and bliss,

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exalted manna, gladness of
the best, Heaven in ordinary,

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man well drest, the milky
way, the bird of Paradise,

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church-bells beyond the stars
heard, the soul's blood,

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the land of spices;
something understood."

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Thank you very much.

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