A longing for Poetry

I have been hankering for poetry lately.  Off an on I find myself longing for the lines of lyrical words such as Emily Dickinson wrote: “Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, the initial of creation and the exponent of breath.”
These words speak to me, and me being me I left my volume of Emily Dickinson at home.  So I have wracked my brain and found from a previous blog a section of a poem by (welsh poet) that Madeleine L’Engle uses in her book, “A Ring of Endless Light.”  The lines she used intrigued me so much that I searched the library system and requested one of the only two volumes within the entire Southwest Central Library District of Wisconsin.
Those opening lines are:
“I saw Eternity the other night
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light,
        All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years
                Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd, In which the world
        And all her train were hurl'd”

The poem, inspired by John 2:16-17 talks about what passes away; pride, lust, etc versus what is eternal.  The closing lines were also poignant.

“Yet some, who all this while did weep and sing,
And sing, and weep, soar'd up into the Ring,
           But most would use no wing.
O fools (said I,) thus to prefer dark night
                       Before true light,
To live in grots, and caves, and hate the day
           Because it shews the way,
The way which from this dead and dark abode
                   Leads up to God,
A way where you might treat the sun, and be
                   More bright than he.
But as I did their madnes so discusse
            One whisper'd thus,
This ring the Bride-groome did for none provide
            But for his bride.”

Poetry speaks into the soul, in many ways.  And it has been a long time since I have allowed poetry to minister to me.  And so I find with longing, the desire once more to life the pen and write lines of my own.  Perhaps I’ll post them here, in yet another entry.

Until then, I think I’ll try browsing the internet and find some poems to read.