Poetry Friday XVII

Well, today is poetry Friday, but I have actually decided to take a break from blogging for a while - since all I am doing of late is poetry Friday anyway. In a couple of weeks I am going to run the risk of driving Bessie, the little old car I have had since Lancelot was written off, to Brisbane for Christmas. This year it will be just me and Mum, with my sisters and their families heading to their husband's families in other towns, so that is going to be a little quiet and different (it's just so much more fun with the kids, and you get to play with toys all afternoon). Then in January I will be back and looking for a little flat to live in, a new church, and a new job. On that note, I just read this post on the benefits of living in close proximity to your church, and this post on careerism, which is worth keeping in mind (not that I am in too much danger of that of late).

For those of you who liked my toenail story of last Friday (this is for you Em) this morning I was out for my jog and went too close to one of those big spikey plants protuding over someone's front fence and pricked my hand, and just with the way the minutest cuts on your fingers bleed excessively, and the way I was moving, by the time I got home I could have hired my hand out for a horror film (when the reality is that once I washed it you couldn't even find where all the blood was coming from). Today I decorated my new desk at work with festive paraphenalia, just to get into the spirit of it. I don't know what's happened to the 'razor wire' I had last year, and my colleague has put the pink wings on Steve Irwin and brought out her radioactive reindeer again (it's hot pink - everything with her is hot pink - and just looks like it must have been too close to Chernobyl if you ask me). She actually gave me a rustic looking angel, which she thinks is disgusting (each to their own!) and which I think goes perfectly on my feature post (the old wooden beam that runs right through the middle of my desk). I also lost my mouse pad in the move, so she offered me her "crocs rule" one, which I politely declined.

Anyway, I do have a poem. This is one for the lead up to Christmas. I like it because it reminds me of what the Incarnation was actually for. And if anything blog worthy happens any time soon, it'll be here.

The Burning Babe

Robert Southwell (1561(?)–1595)

AS I in hoary winter’s night

Stood shivering in the snow,

Surprised I was with sudden heat

Which made my heart to glow;

And lifting up a fearful eye

To view what fire was near,

A pretty babe all burning bright

Did in the air appear;

Who, scorchèd with excessive heat,

Such floods of tears did shed,

As though His floods should quench His flames,

Which with His tears were bred:

‘Alas!’ quoth He, ‘but newly born

In fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts

Or feel my fire but I!

‘My faultless breast the furnace is;

The fuel, wounding thorns;

Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke;

The ashes, shames and scorns;

The fuel Justice layeth on,

And Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought

Are men’s defilèd souls:

For which, as now on fire I am

To work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath,

To wash them in my blood.’

With this He vanish’d out of sight

And swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I callèd unto mind

That it was Christmas Day.