Father Jonathan Tobias at the Second Terrace blog appears to appreciate Auden’s For the Time Being, too. Here, he quotes and comments on passages that I savored, but that I don’t think I passed along or commented on earlier this Nativity season:
Joseph, Mary, pray for all
The proper and conventional
Of whom this world approves
…
O pray for our salvation
Who take the prudent way
Believing we shall be exempted
From the general condemnation
…
O pray for us, the bourgeoisie.I am that star most dreaded by the wise,
For they are drawn against their will to me,
Yet read in my procession through the skies
The doom of orthodox suphrosyne:
I shall discard their major preservation,
All that they know so long as no one asks:
I shall deprive them of their minor tasks
In free and legal households of sensation,
Of money, picnics, beer, and sanitation.Beware. All those who follow me are led
Onto that Glassy Mountain where are no
Footholds for logic, to that Bridge of Dread
Where knowledge but increases vertigo;
Those who pursue me take a twisting lane
To find themselves immediately alone
With savage water or unfeeling stone,
In labyrinths where they must entertain
Confusion, cripples, tigers, thunder, pain.…
Descend into the fosse of Tribulation,
Take the cold hand of Terror for a guide;
Below you in its swirling desolation
Hear tortured Horror roaring for a bride:
O do not falter at the last request
But, as the huge deformed head rears to kill,
Answer its craving with a clear I Will;
Then wake, a child in the rose-garden, pressed
Happy and sobbing to your lover’s breast.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 