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Shakespeare Sonnet 1

26 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by memoirandremains in Literature, Shakespeare, Uncategorized

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Beauty, Death, Edward De Vere, Golden Age, History, poem, Poetry, Shakespeare, Sonnet

Sonnets1609titlepage

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

[3] But, as the riper should by time decease,

[4] His tender heir might bear his memory.

[5] But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

[6] Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

[7] Making a famine where abundance lies,

[8] Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

[9] Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

[10] And only herald to the gaudy spring

[11] Within thine own bud buriest thy content

[12] And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

[13] Pity the world, or else this glutton be—

[14] To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

The sonnet fits perfectly into three quatrains and a couplet. The argument fits into the form with the first line of each quatrain a topic sentence and the couplet a conclusion.

The poem is a request that the recipient of the poem (a person of endless speculation) would have children. By having children you achieve a kind of immorality and bless the world. But selfishness is a gluttony where you spend yourself upon yourself in death.

The first stanza sets out the primary argument of the poem: have children! Shakespeare gives two reasons: It is a good to the world for the best to have children; and, it is a good to you to have one who carries on your memory:

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

[3] But, as the riper should by time decease,

[4] His tender heir might bear his memory.

The argument skillfully weaves the two argument into one.

The Perpetuation of Beauty

The first argument appears in lines 1-2.

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

There are two elements to this argument: (a) origin, and (b) desire.

Origin of Beauty

This argument would be easily missed, because it is a concept so foreign to our “modern is best” understanding. We are anxious over the newest; we think the present is best and the future is better. We have a Hegelian progress of history (I don’t mean in some technical Hegelian manner, but as a general understanding) in which the present is better than the past.

This understandings of the progress of history is precisely the opposite of pre-Hegelian forebears. The earth at the first was pristine: It was best at first. This concept appears worldview which would have been available to Shakespeare. First, the Bible begins with the Garden of Eden. The original world was pristine. But world was altered, through the Fall of Adam into sin; and then, through the devastation of the Flood.

Second, classical mythology understands the history of the world to have progressed through a series of ages beginning with the Golden Age:

First of all [110] the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods [115] without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, [120] rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods. 

 Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Works and Days. (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914). “Then” a second, silver age of men were found upon the earth:

then they who dwell on Olympus made a second generation which was of silver and less noble by far. It was like the golden race neither in body nor in spirit. 

 Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Works and Days. (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914).

Thus, when we think of a great good like beauty, we think of it as an artifact of the pristine world. Beauty was something in the world from an earlier age and now descended to us. The ancient was not a place of foolish superstition and bad science, it was an age of greater truth and beauty. We are not the accumulation of wisdom but the running down of the world.

With that idea in mind, consider the second line of the sonnet

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

The rose of beauty can be lost — indeed, it will be lost if we are not careful to preserve it.

This idea, when it exists in our present age, exists in our understanding of non-human nature. This curious, but not necessarily without foundation. Remember that the Greek concept of a Golden Age comes from a Pagan conception of the universe without a Creator-Creature divide. Moreover, the relationship of human beings to the created order is fundamentally different. The concept of the “image of God” does not appear in the same way in pagan anthropology.

On that issue, the best starting place would be Peter Jone’s, The Other Worldview.

The concept of a pristine earlier age does exist in environmentalism. There is an ecological understanding of the human beings as the agent of defection, the means of devastation. The absence of human activity is good; the presence of human activity is what makes the world worse.

The Desire for Beauty

Beauty — with truth — is also an object of desire and the charm and foundation of life. Keats in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn famously wrote:

When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
         “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Christianity would posit this triad, the true, the beautiful and the good.

We desire the best creatures to reproduce (increase) so that beauty will continue in the world.  We – the rest of the world – desire all of the best creatures to fill the world. There is a faint echo of a biblical theme. Prosperity is always marked as “increase”:

Psalm 115:14 (KJV): The Lord shall increase you more and more,

You and your children.

“Fairest” is the praise of Canticles 1.8, 5.9, 6.1. But this is mixed with a Roman theme of an heir to bear one’s memory.

The Beautiful Should Desire the Continuation of Beauty: Memory as Immortality

The movement of lines 2-4 take this public theme of all the world desires the perpetuating of this beauty to this continuing the beauty is a private benefit of one’s memory.

The trick in the argument is the world “But” at the beginning of line 3. The But shifts the argument to a second theme. We don’t know the rhetorical trick because the But is followed by a parenthetical which distracts us.

A second But turns the private argument on its head. But you are so concerned with yourself that you do not even consider your memory.

This stanza says you have no sense of time. A theme Shakespeare will repeatedly consider is the ever present fact of death.

Stanza Two: The effect upon you for your folly

You are consuming your beauty and youth while not even considering the effect this will have upon yourself and upon others:

5] But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

[6] Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

[7] Making a famine where abundance lies,

[8] Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

You are making a famine of yourself.

Ironically, the poet cares for the subject than the subject does to his or her self.

The final stanza moves from argument to rebuke:

9] Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

[10] And only herald to the gaudy spring

[11] Within thine own bud buriest thy content

[12] And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

You are the spring of the world, but you do not care. You the Spring of the world. Your stinginess, your “niggarding” is a waste.

The beauty of your life and body can only be preserved by having a child.

One theory of Shakespeare is that Shakespeare was the front for Edward DeVere. If so, this poem makes sense as a complaint to Elizabeth Queen.

 

I am unaware of anyone advancing that theory and it may be just nonsense — but then most of the speculation on the “reality” behind the sonnets is nonsense. All or anyone of the sonnets could be fabrications of his imagination. Shakespeare was at the very least inventive.

The couplet draws these themes together into a rebuke

13] Pity the world, or else this glutton be—

[14] To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

It also multiples implications by the sheer compression of the languag.

You are a glutton who eats what is due another by dying- because you will die. You could do us good, but you will not.

The grave is a glutton and eats people. You are a glutton to yourself by giving yourself to the grave.

Selfishness is death in life and a severer death of being forgotten after death.

Tariqu al Hakim

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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Crusades, God's Batallions, Hakim, History, Rodney Stark

The sixth Fatimid caliph in Egypt was a very strange man:

On the other hand, he ordered that all the dogs in Cairo be killed, that no grapes be grown or eaten (to prevent the making of wine), that women never leave their homes, and that shoemakers cease making women’s shoes. Hkim also outlawed chess and the eating of watercress or of any fish without scales. He suddenly required that everyone work at night and sleep during the day since these were his preferred hours. He murdered his tutor and nearly all of his viziers, large numbers of other high officials, poets, and physicians, and many of his relatives—often doing the killing himself. He cut off the hands of the female slaves in his palace. To express his opposition to public baths for women, he had the entrance to the most popular one suddenly walled up, entombing alive all who were inside. Hkim also forced all Christians to wear a four-pound cross around their necks and Jews to wear an equally heavy carving of a calf (as shame for having worshipped the Golden Calf). Finally, Hkim had his name substituted for that of Allah in mosque services.None of this changed history.

But then Hkim ordered the burning or confiscation of all Christian churches (eventually about “thirty thousand were burned or pillaged”) and the stripping and complete destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, including all traces of the carved-out tomb beneath it.

Stark, God’s Battalions

The Past as a Hero

25 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Book Review, Ministry

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Autopsy of a Dead Church, Conrad Mbewe, Ecclesiology, History, past, Thom Rainer

Thom Rainer’s Autopsy of a Dead Church examines the way in which a church slowly erodes as it gives up the true work of a Church (to fulfill the Great Commission while loving God & neighbor). The congregation becomes increasing inward focused, a claustrophobic social club, shrinking in on itself.

I had the privilege of spending sometime with Conrad Mbewe (http://www.conradmbewe.com), who asked, “How is your church relevant to Jesus Christ?” A church can be busy with nothing valuable it if it not relevant, not valuable to what Jesus is doing (since The Church is His Church).

The most telling error of a  dying church is the way it relates to its own past. Like an aging man reliving his high school glory, a congregation which looks backward (and thus inward) of is of no real use to the Kingdom:

The most pervasive and common thread of our autopsies was that the deceased churches lived for a long time with the past as hero. They held on more tightly with each progressive year. They often clung to things of the past with desperation and fear. And when any internal or external force tried to change the past, they responded with anger and resolution: “We will die before we change.”

And they did.

Hear me clearly: these churches were not hanging on to biblical truths. They were not clinging to clear Christian morality. They were not fighting for primary doctrines, or secondary doctrines, or even tertiary doctrines. As a matter of fact, they were not fighting for doctrines at all. They were fighting for the past. The good old days. The way it used to be. The way we want it today.

For sure , there were some prophets and dissenters in these churches. They warned others that, if the church did not change, it would die. But the stalwarts did not listen. They fiercely resisted. The dissenters left. And death came closer and closer.

Rainer, Thom S. (2014-04-14). Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive (Kindle Locations 161-168). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. The book is well written, clear and useful. It diagnoses the trouble with an ill church and how to turn the trouble around. Each trouble is matched by a prayer resolution to avoid (or repent) of a trap which kills a congregation and thus turns away from the work of Christ.

Rainer estimates the following categories for active congregations in North America:

Healthy: 10%

Symptoms of sickness: 40%

Very sick: 40%

Dying: 10%

That means 300,000 churches are sick or very sick. With such serious  statistics, this book is one which any church leader should read and prayerfully consider.

If General McClellan Does not Want to Use the Army

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in Uncategorized

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Army, Civil War, History, Lincoln, McClellan

McClellan was better at organizing than fighting. He was highly intelligent, but couldn’t wage a successful campaign. He always had an excuse for not engaging the enemy: his men were outnumbered (actually, they were not); he needed more troops; and it wasn’t a good time or place or season for a battle. Once, Lincoln was so frustrated at McClellan’s failure to act that he sent the general a telegram that read, “If General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it for a time, provided I could see how it could be made to do something.”

The Final Days of Jesus March 29, 33 A.D.

14 Monday Apr 2014

Posted by memoirandremains in John, Luke, Mark, Matthew

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Church History, Death of Christ, History, Palm Sunday, Passion Week

For the time that is past

11 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in 1 Peter, Colossians, Mortification

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1 Peter, 1 Peter 4:3, Colossians, Colossians 3, History, Karl Braune, Mortification, past, Sin

1 Peter 4:3:

For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.—

The time past — that language should be sufficient to drive the Christian off from his sin:

With every sin look at its concealed beginning in the heart, and its public issue in the judgment of God, who regards the heart.—Be not content with strength enough to prevent the sin of the heart from breaking out unto word and work. Be so ashamed of the past, that the present may not be as it was, and the future become far worse.—As a rule lying to others is closely connected with lying about others.
…. No argument will prevail more with a Christian to follow on the work of mortification closely for the time to come, than the remembrance of his long continuance in sin. in time past.—

Karl Braune, Commentary on Colossians 3:1-10, p. 67

A Short History of Isaac Watts and English Church Music

04 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by memoirandremains in Isaac Watts, Music

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History, Isaac Watts, Music

 

 Issac Watts:

 Isaac Watts, born in 1664, died 1748, was not technically a Puritan.  He was born too late to be part of the Puritan movement, but he is certainly allied with the Puritans in his desire to rethink the whole of Christian worship and practice in terms of the Bible.  He, like the Puritans, was unwilling to continue a particular practice merely because it had always been done that way.

Watts was named for his father, a non-conformist minister.  To understand what it means to be a Anonconformist@ , you must understand a small bit of history.  In 1660, Charles II was Arestored@ to the throne of England.  Charles, a Roman Catholic at heart was welcomed by much of the population who both hated the Puritans and could not have cared less about the their religion, except in a superstitious sort of way; they  were willing to have any religion, as long it made no greater claims upon them than to be baptized as infants and require an occasional trip to church.

With the restoration of the King, the country became extremely debauched and depraved.  The public life of the country turned upon the Puritans with force.  Poems and plays attacked the Puritans. The political and religious elite also set out after them.  In 1660, John Bunyan was cast into prison.  In 1662, the law ejected 2000 Puritans from their pulpits.  In 1664, another law made it illegal to hold religious services which did not Aconform@ to the requirements of the Anglican Church.  Many found the Anglican service to be filled with man-made inventions and elements which were idolatrous.

Some men could not Aconform@ to the requirements of the government without defiling their conscience.  Such men were called non-conformists.  One of them, Isaac Watts, was thrown into prison.  The wife of Isaac would bring their infant, also named Isaac to the prison to visit and sit on the stone outside the jail door.

As a young man, Watts was very diligent and intelligent.  And, like many young people you now know, Watts ruined his health by spending too much time studying.  This was not a terribly uncommon thing with young men who were or became Puritans.  Oddly enough from our perspective, the Puritan movement was a youth movement centered in the university.  There were parents who were afraid to send their sons to college for fear they should come back Puritans.

Like Watts, the Puritans were also quite literary.  There are wonderful examples of Puritan poetry, from men and women, such as John Milton, Anne Bradstreet and Edward Taylor.  Watts, in writing poems, fell within that legacy.


The young Watts threw himself into education.    However, his naturally weak constitution was made even more fragile by his excessive study.   He finished college at the age of 20.  He preached on occasion beginning in 1698.  In 1701, he accepted the call to become the minister of a non-conformist church.  He accepted his call with great reluctance and asked the congregation to consider other men, whom Watts considered better qualified than himself.  When the church insisted on Isaac, he consented.

Very shortly thereafter, Watts fell terribly ill.  Fortunately, a wealthy family in the church took Watts in.  He spent the remainder of his life living on their estate, protected from the need to work when he was too ill.  Watts never married.

The space given to Watts permitted him to continue to minister and preach, when his health permitted.  He also wrote various books, including a logic book which was a standard textbook for a couple of hundred years.

Incidentally, he also reworked the entire practice of Christian congregational singing.


History of English Church Song

To understand the  Watts-Revolution, you need to understand just a bit about the history of English Church Song.  At the time of the Reformation, both Luther and later Calvin worked to put singing back in the hands of the congregation.  By the late Middle Ages, singing was given completely to the choir.

Although Luther and Calvin both gave the song back to the congregation, they did so in different ways.  Calvin was of the opinion that only the Psalms should be sung.  Luther permitted the composition of hymns on appropriate topics.  In fact, many hymns we still sing, such as a Mighty Fortress is our God were written by Luther.

The English Reformers had strong ties to Geneva, the home of Calvin. The English Protestants took over Calvin=s habit of singing only the Psalms.


To that end, there were various editions of metrical Psalms published; that would be a Psalm reworked to have meter and rhyme so as to be easier to sing.

Editions of these works appeared in the 1500’s and became the standard B indeed the only text for the songs which were sung in the Christian Churches in England.  This brings us to work of Isaac Watts.

The Watts – Revolution

In the early 18th century, a variety of ministers began to voice concerns about the sole use of metrical Psalms for congregational singing.  Some argued for reinvigorating the old style of Psalm singing.  Some argued for adding New Testament songs to the existing Psalms.  Isaac Watts suggested that the ministers re-think and re-work the practice of congregational songs.


Watts conceived of congregational songs as Christians singing to God.  Since singing was done by Christians directing their attention and worship towards God, it was appropriate that the words of their songs properly reflect their own experience and understanding of God.  From that simple proposition, Watts set out a two-fold scheme for rethinking and reworking song:  First, they needed to reconsider the Psalms.  Second, they needed to add songs which would reflect the fullness of the Christian life.

The Psalms

Watts never suggested that the church leave-off singing metrical versions of the Psalms.  He merely noted that the Church should be particular about the selection and use of the Psalms.

               While all the Psalms were profitable to believers, not all of the Psalms were appropriate for the believer as one personally singing to God.

In addition, the Psalms alone cannot express the full scope of understanding of a believer who lives after the time of the cross of Christ.  The incarnation, the birth, death, burial and resurrection of Christ are not fully and plainly expressed when one is limited to the Psalms alone; for that there was needed ANew Testament Songs@.

New Testament Songs

Watts argued for the use of songs specifically written to address the truth and experience of the believer who has the New Testament.  Watts explained that songs were a form of teaching, and, since the preacher explained the New Testament, indeed the whole of the Bible, it would be equally appropriate for the pastor to teach the congregation by means of songs which expounded a biblical truth.


Watts= Psalms and Hymns

In December 1705, Watts published his Psalms and Hymns.  The book contained three sections: The paraphrased Psalms, hymns for communion and Afree composures@.  Although the book initially received some rather stiff objections, it soon became a great favorite of church.  Watts= book had wide ranging affects.  In 1731, a fellow-pastor writing to Watts said that Watts= book was the Adaily entertainment@ of many poor members of his congregation.  As late as 1864, a new edition of Watts= book sold 60,000 copies.

Watts= book opened the door for other ministers to write their own songs for their congregations.  For example, John Newton wrote Amazing Grace to underscore the sermon on a particular day.  In 1784 a compilation of songs written by various pastors B much like the hymnal in the pew before you B  was published.

In addition to his Psalms and Hymns, Watts also invented the Children=s Song.

The Nature of the Book

If you were to pick up a copy of Watts= book, you would not find music, as you would in a modern hymnal.  Instead you would find only words.  There were various melodies which the congregation would know.  A small number of melodies would be sufficient to sing any of the songs in the book.

Since the songs were considered to be a lesson, the emphasis was on the words, not the melody.  Songs perform a teaching a function, you remember them, think about them, repeat them.  As with anything, you should be wise in what you are willing to learn; consider the songs who leave in your heart.


How a Song was Written

The songs themselves were teaching based upon a biblical text.  Watts would turn his meditation upon that text into a short poem.  The poem is a compact exposition of gospel truth.  For example, AGod forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ@ (Gal. 6:14) and Paul=s note that Athey . . . crucified the Lord of Glory@ (1 Cor. 2:8) becomes,

1          When I survey the wondrous cross,

On which the Prince of glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.


2          Forbid it Lord that I should boast,

Save in the death of Christ my God;

All the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to His blood. 

In those short words, Watts teaches the incarnation, the crucifixion, the atonement, grace, the righteousness of God, and Christian humility.  The gospels= description of the crucifixion becomes

3          See, from His head, His hands,

His feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down;

Did e=er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Complete dedication of the believer, such as Paul=s command to Apresent your bodies as a living sacrifice@, becomes

 


4          Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

The poem moves the believer to a more complete dedication to Christ by showing forth Christ, who Ahath loved us and hath given himself for us as an offering and sacrifice to God@ (Eph. 5:2).  This poem becomes a picture of the truth, AThat we loved him because he first loved us@ (1 John 4:19).   This short poem transverses a great swath of Christian doctrine in a manner which engages both the heart and the mind.   Here is great matter packed in a manner that even a child can carry it about.

We could make similar examinations of any number of songs written by Watts, such as Joy to the World, or Alas and did My Savior Bleed@ or any number of other songs.  Indeed, I would encourage you do so.  I would encourage you to memorize these songs.

And, if you have children, teach them to memorize these and other hymns B but don=t pay them to do so.  The grandmother of Charles Spurgeon offered young Charles money for each hymn of Watts which he memorized B which a great plan until she discovered that he had a photographic memory and could inhale a hymn by Watts at a glance.

 

 

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