According to my blog access statistics, some of the poems I post on here seem to be fairly popular so I thought I’d put up another one by another poet from the Metaphysical tradition, William Habington. He belonged to a prominent Catholic family and lived in England from 1605 to 1654, during a time of great religious upheaval.
The title of this particular poem is taken from the Latin (Vulgate) version of Psalm 19, the first two lines of which are
Caeli enarrant gloriam Dei et opus manus eius adnuntiat firmamentum.
Dies diei eructat verbum et nox nocti indicat scientiam.
The King James Bible translates this as
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
Some translations I have seen give “night after night” rather than the form above. My distant recollection of Latin learnt at school tells me that nocti is the dative case of the third declension noun nox, so I think think “night shows knowledge to night” is indeed the correct sense of the Latin. Of course I don’t know what the sense of the original Hebrew is!
The original Psalm is the text on which one of the mightiest choruses of Haydn’s Creation is based, “The Heavens are Telling” and Habington’s poem is a meditation on it. It seems to me to be a natural companion to the poem by John Masefield I posted earlier in the week, but I don’t know whether they share a common inspiration in the Psalm or just in the Universe itself.
When I survey the bright
Celestial sphere;
So rich with jewels hung, that Night
Doth like an Ethiop bride appear:
My soul her wings doth spread
And heavenward flies,
Th’ Almighty’s mysteries to read
In the large volumes of the skies.
For the bright firmament
Shoots forth no flame
So silent, but is eloquent
In speaking the Creator’s name.
No unregarded star
Contracts its light
Into so small a character,
Removed far from our human sight,
But if we steadfast look
We shall discern
In it, as in some holy book,
How man may heavenly knowledge learn.
It tells the conqueror
That far-stretch’d power,
Which his proud dangers traffic for,
Is but the triumph of an hour:
That from the farthest North,
Some nation may,
Yet undiscover’d, issue forth,
And o’er his new-got conquest sway:
Some nation yet shut in
With hills of ice
May be let out to scourge his sin,
Till they shall equal him in vice.
And then they likewise shall
Their ruin have;
For as yourselves your empires fall,
And every kingdom hath a grave.
Thus those celestial fires,
Though seeming mute,
The fallacy of our desires
And all the pride of life confute:–
For they have watch’d since first
The World had birth:
And found sin in itself accurst,
And nothing permanent on Earth.
In the Dark 