ON THE BEACH AT FONTANA
Wind whines and whines the shingle,
The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea numbers each single
Slimesilvered stone.
From whining wind and colder
Grey sea I wrap him warm
And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder
And boyish arm.
Around us fear, descending
Darkness of fear above
And in my heart how deep unending
Ache of love!
-James Joyce
Malcolm Guite answers a question about writing poetry.
“You bring up depression. Many of your poems are helpful companions during dark times. When your poems touch on difficulty, they do so as one who has experienced it and yet you’re 
such a jolly man. How is that?”
“Ah, yes, well, a couple of things about that.” He laughs. “As you know, these are things we all share in common. One of the things I consciously resist and rebel against is the idea of poetry as just personal self-expression. The idea of the lonely, romantic genius in his weird, peculiar place, who everyone has to make allowances for leads to this kind of confessional poetry which gets worse and worse and more and more obscure. What does it amount to? Another strange adventure in the little world of me. I don’t buy that at all. No, I want to be the bard of a tribe, to tell the great, collective stories that bind us together, but, of course, I tell them as they’ve happened to me. Whatever is personal of mine, is most emphatically not in the poems as purely self-expression.
“Confessional poetry becomes very tedious after a while. The poetry I want to write and that I enjoy reading articulates the joys and sorrows of life. As to the jollity, I 
suppose I would say that anyone with lighter emotions who hasn’t experienced any pain is in danger of sentiment. I trust them about as much as I trust a Thomas Kincaid painting. You know, there’s a term Tolkien coined, eucatastrophe. Eu, meaning good, so a good catastrophe, but it still has the word catastrophe in it. In some sense, the eucatastrophe at the end of the Lord of the Rings is trustworthy because we’ve been with these characters to the very edge of the crack of doom. That’s why I trust the resurrection because the church doesn’t backpedal on Good Friday.”
From the Rabbit Room
When the flowers of earth have faded,
go outside at night and look up…
WANDERERS
Wide are the meadows of night
And daisies are shining there,
Tossing their lovely dews,
Lustrous and fair;
And through these sweet fields go,
Wanderers ‘mid the stars __
Venus, Mercury, Uranus, Neptune,
Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.
Tired in their silver, they move,
And circling, whisper and say,
Fair are the blossoming meads of delight
Through which we stray.
-Walter de la Mare
A SONG OF DAWN
From heaven has fled the starry night,
And startled sleep has taken flight;
The rosy morn, uprising, spills
Her crystal light o’er vales and hills.
Soon as the earliest ray we see,
Our souls are lifted, Lord, to thee;
Dear God, to thee, our prayers we bring;
To thee rejoicing hymns we sing.
Lord, be our hearts and hopes renewed
In light and love and gratitude,
So may our deeds, illumed by thee,
Worthy thy love and glory be.
We praise thee, Lord, forevermore;
Thee, with the Son our souls adore,
And with the Spirit, three in one,
Reigning while endless ages run.
-St. Hilary of Poitiers (310 – c. 367)
Translated by Daniel Joseph Donahoe
St. Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers in France, is known by some as the Athanasius of the West, for his defense of Nicene theology. This was before St. Ambrose became Bishop of Milan and rose to similar prominence and more fame. He wrote on many topics, including theosis, as below:
We shall be promoted to a glory conformable to that of Him Who became Man for us, being renewed unto the knowledge of God, and created again in the image of the Creator, as the Apostle says, Having put off the old man with his doings, and put on the new man, which is being renewed unto the knowledge of God, after the image of Him that created him. (Col. 3:9-10) Thus is man made the perfect image of God. For, being conformed to the glory of the body of God, he is exalted to the image of the Creator, after the pattern assigned to the first man. Leaving sin and the old man behind, he is made a new man unto the knowledge of God, and arrives at the perfection of his constitution, since through the knowledge of his God he becomes the perfect image of God. Through godliness he is promoted to immortality, through immortality he shall live forever as the image of his Creator. (On the Trinity 11.49)
You can read more about St. Hilary here.
He is remembered in the East and in the West on January 13.
Gladsome Lights 