What do you care that other passengers
upon this ship do not enjoy the sea
the way you do?---its storied history
and great tales (of adventure, navigation,
and lands) that your poetic soul prefers.
Avoid, therefore, the lingering temptation
to meet such people with cold indignation.
Instead: enjoy their present company,
on their terms; while your own, cherished, delight
(that they decline) can be quite privately
appreciated for its poetry---
with neither insults meant nor clumsy slights
perceived or blamed. Thus, in tranquility
possess your soul's familiar delectation.
Author's Notes/Comments:
For some time, I have been disappointed in some of my Christian brethren, at the local church I attend, who are unwilling to even try to appreciate the great, historical heritage of ancient Christianity. These people are concerned only for what "Ma & Pa" said; or what old Granddad preached; or what Uncle Billy-Bob-Jim-Joe taught in Sunday school back in 1910. Their unwillingness to try to understand, much less love, the time and place in which Jesus lived on earth and ministered (and, likewise, the early Christians) had so confounded me as to begin to affect my personal piety. This poem, in metaphor, describes the workable solution: to treat them with courtesy, without entering into their ignorance, and to appreciate my own delights the more so in private.
The last line is meant to echo Luke 21:19.
wow this is amazing... the
wow this is amazing... the subject.. the message.. the structure.. did you write it in iambic pentameter... that's quite extraordinary
Thanks for saying so. Yes, I
Thanks for saying so. Yes, I did write it in iambic pentameter, I normally think in terms of that line. (A curious anectdote: when I was your age, and beginning to write poetry, I tried to write iambic pentameter like Milton's. Then, after writing in the early evening, I'd call my then girl friend (it was, sadly, somewhat one-sided, with my feelings being the more intense), but she, also a reader of poetry, recognized that the first several sentences out of my mouth would be in imabic pentatmeter. It was odd how, at that young age, it really got itself into my mind.)
Starward