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Unreflecting Love

I was reading some poetry this weekend and came across John Keats’s 52nd Sonnet (otherwise known as When I Have Fears). It is a beautiful sonnet to say the least, but I was particularly moved by these words:

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
   That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
   Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Here I simply one to record one train of thought thought from my reading of this sonnet.

The line ‘Never have relish in the faery power/Of unreflecting love…’ struck a particular chord with my imagination. Just yesterday I finished up a lengthy series on Romans 8 and had to deal with that famous line of the Apostle Paul, ‘What shall separate us from the love of Christ?’ As I thought about how I might go about presenting such a grand theme as the love of Christ, I almost felt at a loss for words. I have reflected on the love of Christ for years, and because of that past reflection, at times I feel it is an unreflecting love at this point.

I would never say that love must be fully unreflecting. Rather, I would urge that we reflect on the object of love to the point that our experience in the present, at times, feels as though there were no need for reflection: that is that we would simply bask in beauty from time to time. That is what I wanted to do Sunday morning before the great love of Christ. And if the beauty of that experience were taken from me, indeed I think that I would sink. But I would not appreciate that beauty quite so much in the present had I not spent years previously reflecting on it.

The same is the case with purely human love in some sense. To enjoy unreflecting love is a great privilege; but it will never truly be enjoyed if the unreflecting love of the present is not backed up the deep reflections of the past. Beauty is fleeting. I can look at my wife and cringe at the thought of never again seeing her face. But if it is just a face, why would I cringe? Rather, behind that face, for me, lies a thousand reflections from that past dozen years that reinforce the significance of that beauty. Again, I say, it is the reflection of the past that makes way for the true beauty, or faery power, of unreflecting love in the present.

You can read the entire sonnet HERE.

Whose Name Was Writ In Water

I am not a poetry expert by any means, but my favorite stanza of all the poetry I have read is from John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
         No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
         In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
         Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
                She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
                        The same that oft-times hath
         Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
                Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
I read a short biography of Keats this past week and learned for the first time of the words he requested to be written on his tombstone:

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

Keats died at 25 years old. His accomplishments as a writer are amazing when you consider how young he died. He had a strong sense of the brevity of life, and his epitaph reflected that. His skylark was immortal but he knew that he was not. Consider therefore the shortness of your life and where your name is written:

  • So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90:12).
  • He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it (Rev. 2:17).