O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum,
super quem continebunt reges os suum,
quen Gentes deprecabuntur:
veni ad liberandum nos, jam noli tardare.
O Root of Jesse, stand as a sign among the peoples;
before you kings will shut their mouths,
to you the nations will make their prayer:
Come and deliver us, and delay no longer.
O Radix
All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,
Rose from a root invisible to all.
We knew the virtues once of every weed;
But, severed from the roots of ritual,
We surf the surface of a wide-screen world
And find no virtue in the virtual.
We shrivel on the edges of a wood
Whose heart we once inhabited in love.
Now we have need of you, forgotten Root,
The stock and stem of every living thing
Whom once we worshiped in the sacred grove.
For now is winter, now is withering
Unless we let you root us deep within,
Under the ground of being, graft us in.
All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,
Rose from a root invisible to all.
We knew the virtues once of every weed;
But, severed from the roots of ritual,
We surf the surface of a wide-screen world
And find no virtue in the virtual.
We shrivel on the edges of a wood
Whose heart we once inhabited in love.
Now we have need of you, forgotten Root,
The stock and stem of every living thing
Whom once we worshiped in the sacred grove.
For now is winter, now is withering
Unless we let you root us deep within,
Under the ground of being, graft us in.
-- Malcolm Guite
2 comments:
these are all so lovely...thanks for finding them and posting them... : )
Aren't they amazing? Sonnets, no less. I'm in awe.
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