Sublime

Lowell captured Dante’s appeal to readers—Belle included—with his dictum that the poet was “part of the soul’s resources in time of trouble.”

THE MORE LOVING ONE

by W.H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think

14 For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant. 15 I will lay waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbage; I will turn the rivers into islands, and dry up the pools.

for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be married. 5 For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder[181] marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. 6 Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have posted sentinels; all day and all night they shall never be silent. You who remind t

who confirms the word of his servant, and fulfills the prediction of his messengers; who says of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,” and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt, and I will raise up their ruins”;

About his figure there is a Celtic pathos; like the Gaels in Matthew Arnold’s quotation, “he went forth to battle, but he always fell.” He is a mountain of proposals, a mountain of failures; but still a mountain. And a mountain is always romantic.

Do not fear, for I am with you;

Let them give glory to the LORD, and declare his praise in the coastlands.