This blog contains examples of my found verse from the prose of Rutherford/Hogarth/Van Gogh/Reynolds/Gainsborough/Donne/Vaughan/Herbert and Gilfillan
My inspiration
in this case by a particular letter of Rutherford's fames 'Letters'but an amalgam of
Rutherford’s exceptional literary turn of phrase taken from many letters
and created into unique theme poems that reflect the phrases contained therein ,hence
I have labelled this verse form as as ‘phrasis’.
As a contemporay evangelical Christian , I am in ‘sympathy’ with much of Rutherford’s theology and a poet of some years experience of many poetic forms and therefore offered this ebook on kindle to ‘enrich the universal church’ as Thomson suggested by Rutherford's 19th century biographer, and hopefully to encourage others to read Samuel Rutherford’s pastoral letters for themselves.
As a contemporay evangelical Christian , I am in ‘sympathy’ with much of Rutherford’s theology and a poet of some years experience of many poetic forms and therefore offered this ebook on kindle to ‘enrich the universal church’ as Thomson suggested by Rutherford's 19th century biographer, and hopefully to encourage others to read Samuel Rutherford’s pastoral letters for themselves.
RUTHERFORD
GRACE GROWS BEST IN WINTER
I had
but one joy,this apple
of my
eye, to preach of Christ
,my
Lord.Now I hang but by
a
thread,but if I may say,
it is
all of Christ’s spinning;
Day by
day the bloom fell
off my
branches and joy did
cast its
flower.And yet I might
still
meet with joy up in the
rainbow’s
bower.There the
good
Husbandman does pick
His rose
and gather His lily.
The
night will close the door
And
hasten my anchor within
the veil
and I shall go away
to
sleep,leaving others,now
to tell my
tale.
An
phrasis epitaph of Samuel Rutherford
using
phrases selected from his letters.
No
56;74;180;185;225;310;333
DONNE
A
METAPHYSICAL MUSE
What
thou lovest in her face
is
colour,if her face be painted
on a
board or wall, thou wilt
love
it.She speaks,smiles and
kisses
much. Because it is
painted
do you not behold with
pleasure
her painted face? Love
her who
shows her love to thee,
in this
smile , lovely to thee,all
her love
forever be,if her face
forever,
rests upon thee.
I see her
often,solaced with beauty,
the rich
sweet softness of her
eyes,that
all my senses now
apprehend.
Elixir of all vertues,
handmaidens,Pandars
of the
bodies
pleasure.That Virginity
a virtue,kept
by modest chastity
‘til
willing and desirous to yield.
When the
name Virgin shall be
exchanged
,for the more
honourable
name, of Wife .
From
John Donne’s prose Juvenilia 2,11,12
VAUGHAN
WHEN THE
WORLD SLEEPS
This man
Christ,very God and
very man,this great design and ‘til
the end
of time,to make all sinners
‘mine’.
To commemorate this
sacrifice
this glorious sacrament,
a
preparation daye, a solemne
Feast of
mercy and miracles.Pledges
of Thy
love, sacred institutions
regularly
to be said, of prayer and
meditation,lest
they wither away,
dead,
with time.When all the world
is
asleep we should’st watch upon the
Day-lilie
of life as if the sun were
already
set.When all is gone,and
all is
dust, deformity ,desolation
and
stress.Keep me Lord from hours,
and the
powers, of the darknesse.
From Henry Vaughan’s Solitary Desolations
HERBERT
BUD
& GLOW
Think
not my silence forgetfulness
my
meaning now to you declare,
my
resolution to be, all in this
poetry.This
diversity of your
favours
now,I dare no longer
silent
stay.Some observations
I have
framed to myself and
relate
to you today.My tears,
many for
you,to bud .glow
and bear
fruit in your soul and
not take
their toll,such fruit of
my
observations will I’m sure
bless
you more and more.I fear
onl that
I haver omitted some
fitting
circumstance,yet you will
pardon
my haste and forgive if
my verse
is not entirely to your taste.
From
George Herbert letters 1,2,3,4,8
9,10,12,13,15
HOGARTH
INLETS
OF BEAUTY
Shell
like and thin,without and
within,whose
surface naturally
co-incide.Straight
rays from the
eyes,horizontal,perpendicular,
prace
with beauty personified.
Simplicity,intricacy
uniformity
Quanitified.inlets of beauty
evident,entertaining
the eye
glutted
with variety.A plain
space,pleasant
to see,scroll
and volute
in symmetry,surprised
by
mimicry to avoid regularity.
Simple,distinct
enjoying with
ease, in
cone form or pyramid
will
ever please.Allegory,riddle
where
angles amuse,magnitude
ill-shaped,adds
greatness to grace,
a broken
line to enhance each
face.Lines
rgat entwine,twisting
then
un-wind.Serpentine,well
composed
adds variety to art,
waving,dotted
or straight,elegant
grace in
our eye will impart.
From
Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty
BOUNDS
OF THE EXOTIC
Fancy
which has no foundation
constancy
or precision,resemblance
or
harmony,lies.Not fixed or variable
in its
effort to please,no better than
prejudice,transitory,fantastical
it dies,
unguided,
unseen.In narrow
bounds
of the exotic rude and
wild,uncultured
forlorn,dressed
in the
fashion of its times,an
allegorical
ornament with ideas
of
grandeur.Thoughts conveyed
as
statues,bas-relief,intaglios
cameos
melted and refined
borrowed
and made anew,
complemented
,complimented,too.
From Joshua
Reynolds discourse on art lectures
GILFILLAN
THE
NATURE OF TRUTH
Broken fullness,
in finished fragments
instantly
incarnate falls upon the
fantastic
mirror of the human heart,
truth
entire and absolute living fills
as a
hand in glove,clear,succinct
consistent,by
this God of love.It
coversa nd
commands the finite
over
which it bends,the amplest
and
clearest,highest spoken to man.
This
ideal once of man and of God.
A manual
of worship sublimates
the springs
of hope and joy,charms
heart and
imagination in Christ,
our predestination.
From George
Gilfillan preface to The Bards of the Bible
CONSTABLE
SCENES
OF A CARELESS BOYHOOD
The
sound of water,escaping dams
willows,old
rotten planks,slimy
posts,brickwork,old
timber props
wet ditches,sedges
and silvery nets
towpaths
without gates,horses that
tow barges collared
with a crimson fringe.
Wheat
and thatched cottages and cornstacks
grasses in
flower,bogrush bulrush and
teazle,so
tall.Bindweed,wild carrot,
hemlock
in bloom,cow parsley,plantain
bramble
in June.Poppy,thistle mallow
and
hop.Purple heath,hills and swift
running
streams,true clear fresh and
brisk as
champagne ,about to pop.
From
Constable letters to Rev John Fisher
1825/26/27
GAINSBOROUGH
From the Letters of Thomas Gainsborough
GAINSBOROUGH
ALL IS
SIMPLICITY
Create a
little business for
the Eye
to be drawn from
trees,
to return them with more
glee.Variety,
lively touches,
surprising
effects to make
the
heart dance so pictures
walk out
from their frame.
All is
simplicity and elegance
almost motionless
plainness
in a
grand style.The eye may
be cheated
by appearance and
size, as
a tune confused by a
false
bass, a fictious bundle of
trumpery
in poetical impossibilities.
Fools
talk of imitation and
copying,
all is imitation, what
makes
the difference,notgenius
or
conception but performance.
From the Letters of Thomas Gainsborough
