Compline’s Familiar Chant: A Response To Psalm 17

Returning to my series on the psalms, we come now to psalm 17, a favourite for many reasons, not least because it is the source of many of the most beautiful and comforting phrases in the lovely service of Compline. Compline, or ‘night prayer’ is the final service of the day and its name is derived from the Latin completorium as it is spoken and sung at the completion of the day. One of the joys and privileges in my role as chaplain at Girton college is to sing compline, late on each tuesday night with our wonderful college choir, but anyone can say or sing it, and in this lockdown, away from college, my wife and I have said it together. In fact she has made a podcast of that for others to join in, which you can find HERE.  There is so much to love in this service but i am especially moved by the response:

V:Keep me as the apple of an eye

R: Hide me under the shadow of thy wings

All these phrases are drawn from psalm 17, a psalm which has the beautiful ending:

But as for me, I will behold thy presence in righteousness: and when I awake up after thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it.

So when I came to make my response to this psalm I decided to make it a poem of thanksgiving for the comfort of Compline and to reflect on how the beauty of that service serves to re-enchant a disenchanted world.

As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the play button or the title and you can find the other poems in this evolving series by putting the word ‘psalms’ into the search box on the right.

 

XVII Exaudi, Domine

Oh comfort me until I fall no more.

In this dark season when I am so frail

And fearful, comfort me. I stand before

 

You in your house at evening. I avail

Myself of compline’s long familiar chant

To call on you. I ask you to prevail

 

Over the powers that dull and disenchant

Over the scoffing of a world that’s steeped

In its own excess. And instead to plant

 

Me firmly by your waters, and to keep

Me as the apple of an eye, to hide

Me in the shadow of your wings. I’ll sleep

 

In peace and take my rest. I will abide

In your rich presence now, and when I wake

I will behold you, and be satisfied.

 

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The Seventh Poem In My Corona On The Psalms

Before the Great Lion in his righteousness

Continuing with my ‘corona’ on the psalms, a series of interwoven responses to the psalter, each poem beginning with the last line of the previous poem and offering its last line to the next, we come to psalm VII, a psalm of complete trust in God but also a psalm about his judgement. This psalm contains the crucial insight that in the end evil is self destructive, that it contains the seeds of its own demise:

He hath graven and digged up a pit: and is fallen on himself into the destruction that he made for other.

For his travail shall come upon his own head: and his wickedness shall fall on his own pate.

This is an insight that Milton expressed very powerfully in Comus, where one of the brothers in that masque says ‘Evil will back recoil upon itself and mix no more with good’ the phrase ‘back recoil upon itself’ was probably an allusion to the way cannons recoil back when they are fired – Milton regarded such weapons as essentially a devilish invention, indeed in Paradise Lost there is a scene in Hell where the devils invent fire arms. The psalm also talks about the evil person as ‘a devouring lion’ another image I pick up in my poem, though I balance it with an allusion to the true Lion, Christ mystically shown in revelation as ‘The Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah”, and of course, for modern readers, to Aslan the Great Lion who is Christ in Narnia. You may like to reread the psalm in Coverdales translation, which is my source text before or after you read my poetic reflection on it. If you are new to this series here are links to the other poems:

V  III and IV  II I 

As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button

VII Domine, Deus meus

Until I recognise his face at last

I’ll trust him in the dark and carry on,

Till these destructive powers fall back to dust

 

Till the devouring lions are fled and gone

Before the Great Lion in his righteousness.

Then every place where some small gleam has shown

 

Will shine within the light of holiness,

And he will prove and make me true of heart,

My lord and God, Dominus deus meus.

 

Evil can only break itself apart

Recoiling back into its own destruction

And digging its own grave. It has no part

 

In the true kingdom. All its desolation

Will fall away to nothing and be gone,

Before the splendour of the resurrection.

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The 6th poem in my corona on the psalms

flinging them back before his growing light

Today’s poem from my new sequence is a response to Psalm 6 from the Book of Common Prayer Psalter. Here are links to the earlier poems in this series: V  III and IV  II I

This is one of the darker psalms, and the psalmist seems at once fearful of God and forgetful of his mercy, so it opens:

1. O LORD, rebuke me not in thine indignation: neither chasten me in thy displeasure.
2. Have mercy upon me, O Lord, for I am weak: O Lord, heal me, for my bones are vexed

But the psalmist works through these fears and misgivings and is able to say just before the end of the psalm:

The Lord hath heard my petition: the Lord will receive my prayer.

It is this honesty about difficulty, fear and misgiving which makes the psalter so compelling and gives its moments of joy and recovery their full force and authority. In my own response to this psalm I picked up a phrase from verse 5 that ‘in death no man remembreth thee’ and used it to explore the kind of forgetfulness and amnesia that sometimes darkens our spiritual life. One function both of scripture and of poetry is to re-awaken our good memories of God. You may like to look at the psalm alongside the poem. As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title.

VI Domine, ne in furore

Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day?

I feel my weakness, all my bones are vexed

And all the faith in me seems worn away

 

As though I’ve lost Love’s memory. Perplexed

By false complexities, I mime faith’s part

I keep the book but cannot read the text

 

Unless you come, and write it in my heart,

Unless you help me read it through my tears

And hear me out, and, hearing, heal my hurt.

 

How could I think you punished me? My fears

Just magnified the shadows that I cast

Till you were lost in shadow too. Love hears

 

My cries and clears the shadows of my past

Flinging them back before his growing light

Until I recognise his face at last.

 

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The fifth poem in my ‘corona’ on the psalms

Continuing my new series of poetic reflections and meditations on the psalms, I come to psalm 5, which, rather astonishingly, opens with the words:

1. PONDER my words, O Lord: consider my meditation

It is one thing for us to ponder on the many layers of meaning in the sacred words of scripture, quite another to be told that the Lord ponders on our words with even greater attention. He takes my own tentative voicing of who and how I am and hears it so deeply that he knows more of my heart than I do myself. And that insight was the starting point for this poem. But there were other phrases of the psalm that spoke to me as I prayed it: that I am called into God’s house, a place of healing, where our blood-thirstiness is met with ‘the multitude of his mercies’. This psalm is also special because it gave words to that beautiful anthem ‘Lead me lord, lead me in thy righteousness, make my way plain before my face.’ I loved too that the last word of this psalm is ‘shield’, and as one who is to some extent in this crisis being shielded, I decided to bring that word in at the beginning of my poem. You may like to read psalm 5 in the Coverdale translation, which I am using,  either before or after you read or listen to the poem. As in all this sequence this poem begins with the last line of the previous poem and lends its last line to the next.

Here are links to the earlier poems in this series:   III and IV  II I

As always you can hear me read it by clicking on the title or the ‘play’ button

V Verba mea auribus

Safe in the love of one who’ll never part,

Of one whose kindness is itself a shield

Who understands the deep things of my heart

 

Better than I can ever do, I yield

Myself and my perplexities to him

And in his house of mercy I am healed

 

Healed of this world’s bloodthirstiness, its grim

Deceptions, all its weary wickedness,

The death-speak of its tyrants, as they hymn

 

The idols of their vanity, the emptiness

Of endless purchases, all washed away

Until my sight is cleansed, his righteousness

 

Makes my way plain, and leads me through the play

Of early morning light, to worship him

Whose mercy wakes me at the break of day,

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Two new poems from my ‘corona’ on the psalms

Nestles and settles with you like the dove
In its familiar dovecote

I am continuing to work on my new sequence of poetic reflections on and responses to the psalms during this lockdown. The poetic form of this new work is, appropriately, a corona, an interlacing circlet or crown of poems in which each poem is linked to the next by a shared line,. Each poem is composed of 15 lines divided into five tercets, a reflection of the 150 psalms of the psalter and their traditional division. I thought that today I would share the next two poems in the sequence so that you can see how that link works, though you will also see it if you look back to the poems on psalm 1 and psalm 2. The text of the psalms to which I am responding is Coverdale’s translation in the book of Common Prayer, which also provides the traditional Latin titles I am using, and you might find it useful to read through the psalms yourself and then turn to the poems as an assistance to prayerful response.

This is an enormous undertaking, for which I would value your prayers, but my hope is, eventually to weave a ‘corona’ to honour the saviour, whose prayer life is shown us in the psalms, and who wore for us the corona spina, the crown of thorns, which included the current agonies of our corona crisis, and who is now crowned in glory.

As always you can hear me read the poems by clicking on the ‘play’ button or the title.

III Domine Quid Multiplicati?

That you may find your peace in his good will

Call out to him, and tell him all your fear

For he will hear you from his holy hill

 

He knows how many ills both far and near

Oppress your soul and how they multiply,

These obstacles and problems, how you veer

 

From one side to the other, from one lie

To yet another till there’s nothing true.

Just let it go for now. Don’t even try.

 

Lie down and rest. Let him look after you

And in the morning when you rise again

Then let him lift your head and change your view

 

Replenish, renovate you, and sustain

His long slow blessings in your growing soul,

Till troubles cease and only joys remain.

 

IV Cum invocarem

Till troubles cease and only joys remain

Take refuge in the shelter of his love

Who hears your call and feels with you your pain

 

Who does not keep his distance, high above

But brings his light into your little room

Nestles and settles with you like the dove

 

In its familiar dovecote. From the womb

Of Mary, to her house in Nazareth,

From the upper chamber to the empty tomb

 

He comes to share with you your every breath

And to commune with you. To every heart,

That opens to him he will bring new birth,

 

For every ending offer a new start.

Lie down in peace and trust and take your rest

Safe in the love of one who’ll never part.

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