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A Mary T. Hoffman Commentary from All-Creatures.org

 

"Joyful Curmudgeon" An oxymoron?
No! I see all the beauty of God's creation and I'm joyful.  At the same time, I see all the suffering and corruption going on in the world, and feel called to help expose and end it so that we may have true peace and compassion.

 


George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) – 27 July 2008
By Mary T. Hoffman

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans Cross, English novelist of the Victorian Age, who is best remembered for her novels Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner.

For today I’ve chosen her poem “O, May I Join the Choir Invisible!” that I found in a book of American and British verse published in 1932.

O, May I Join the Choir Invisible!
By George Eliot – pen name of Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans Cross
(1819 – 1880)

O, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
Of miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds
To vaster issues.
So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order, that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.
And all our rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better, – saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love,
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb,
Unread forever.
This is life to come,
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us, who strive to follow.
May I reach
That purest heaven, – be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible,
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

For a collection of spiritual and inspirational poetry, visit:
http://www.all-creatures.org/poetrydir.html

Go on to: Thought for Today – 28 July 2008
Return to: The Case Against Milk – 26 July 2008
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