suprise
by Chesterton · Cluster: Swords and Weapons · Power and Corruption · Tyrant
Abstract
A devotional lyric praying to be sundered from body, blood and soul so as to marvel at oneself as a stranger; wonder, self-and-soul, grace.
Testo / Text
Connections
Topoi: Double
Motifs: Swords and Weapons, Blood, Eyes and Sight, Mirror, Soul, Prayer, River Themes & Concepts: Self-Knowledge, Wonder and Gratitude, Grace and Redemption, Body, Sin and the Fall, Uncanny, Perception and Consciousness Forms & Genres: Lyric, Hymn
Testo integrale / Full text
The Sword of Surprise
Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.
Sunder me from my blood that in the dark
I hear that red ancestral river run
Like branching buried floods that find the sea
But never see the sun.
Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes
Those rolling mirrors made alive in me
Terrible crystals more incredible
Than all the things they see
Sunder me from my soul, that I may see
The sins like streaming wounds, the life’s brave beat
Till I shall save myself as I would save
A stranger in the street.