Poetry Friday - Not a teenage love poem

So poetry Friday ebbs and flows, but I found this love poem I wrote in High School ... just kidding! Actually, just after my love story came a poetry assignment in which we were to write a reply to Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ entitling it ‘To Her Over-Zealous Master’. I am quite amazed at how I matched the rhyme and metre, and in two verses of courteous, Victorian English stated my case. I’d be hard pressed to equal that attempt nowadays without considerable effort. But, creative writing, like all things, improves with practice and at school we had reason to practice.

Instead I thought I’d share another, and a great deal better, modern “love” poem, from the Holy Sonnets of the Twentieth Century, by D.A. Carson. This one is simply called Forty-five, and is based on 1 John 4:10, 1 John 4:19 and John 20:21.

Forty–five

I love because you first loved me: your love

With irresistible enticement paid

In blood, has won my heart; and, unafraid

Of all but self, I’m driven now to love.

I love because you first loved me: your love

Has transformed all my calculations, made

A farce of love based on exchange, displayed

Extravagant self-giving from above.

I love because you first loved me: without

Regenerating power provided by

Your Son’s propitiating death, no doubt

My strongest love would be the mighty “I”.

Your self-originating love’s alone –

The motive, standard, power of my own.

D.A. Carson