Thursday, 12 March 2020

O lux mentis! o lucens veritas!

Saint Augustine (glossing John 1:5), cropping up unexpectedly in Shelley’s ‘To A Skylark’:
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.
Although actually, if I come to think of it: maybe not so unexpectedly after all.


Augustine's third exposition of Psalm 103, there.
at

3 comments:

  1. Alan Jacobs12 March 2020 at 05:32

    The birds chirp, but we, in our spiritual poverty, but tweet.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Adam Roberts12 March 2020 at 06:01

      You lifted yourself out of the Slough of Twitter for a while, Alan; but now ... have you sunk back down?

      It (I mean Shelley and Augustine) does interest me, I must say. The epigraph to Alastor is a quotation from the Confessions, for instance; not what one might imagine "Shelley The Atheist" reading. Except he clearly was.

      Delete
  2. Adam Roberts12 March 2020 at 09:08

    Not to flog this to death or anything, but just to note: "O lux mentis! o lucens veritas!" is a rather handsome pentameter.

    ReplyDelete