An Advent Calendar with Patrick Comerford: 24, 23 December 2025

‘Snow had fallen, snow on snow … in the bleak midwinter’ … snow in Cloister Court, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, some years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the last days of Advent, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. At noon each day this Advent, I am offering an image or two as part of my own ‘Advent Calendar’ for 2025, and an Advent or Christmas carol, hymn or song.

I have been involved all morning with Santa's visit to the Christmas Market in Stony Stratford. It is great fun, and I am thankful it is not snowing. But in this cold winter weather and this costume, it feels like the bleak mid-winter despite all the warm responses of children and adults alike. So, my images for my Advent Calendar at noon today are of snow some years ago in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, on a bleak mid-winter morning during a weekend when I had been invited to preach in the college chapel.

My choice of a carol or hymn today is ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter,’ by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). For many it is closely associated with the Service of Nine Lessons with Carols, broadcast each Christmas Eve from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.

Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter,’ became popular among choirs after it was included it in the BBC broadcasts of the Service of Nine Lessons with Carols by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, using the 1911 setting by Harold Edwin Darke (1888-1976). He had once been the conductor of the choir, and his setting of the poem as a carol included his beautiful and delicate organ accompaniment.

But the tune most often associated with ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is Cranham, composed in 1906 by Gustav Holst (1874-1934).

The poem had been published for the first time seven years earlier in Christina Rossetti’s Poetic Works, 10 years after her death. It was republished in 1906 The English Hymnal, edited by Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with Holst’s setting, and it quickly became a popular Christmas carol. Today ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is one of the most popular and best-loved carols.

Christina Rossetti was part of the Victorian arts-and-crafts movement and the pre-Raphaelite movement. She was a leading advocate of women’s rights, a campaigner against slavery and war, and a prominent member of the Anglo-Catholic movement. She wrote ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ in 1872 in answer to a request from a magazine. But, like a lot of writers, she must have been frustrated that she never saw its publication.

So it took over 30 years, more than a generation, before this poem was first sung as a Christmas carol. Ever since then, though, it has been a firm Christmas favourite, and has been recorded by the King’s Singers, Julie Andrews, the Moody Blues, the Pet Shop Boys, James Taylor, Alison Crowe, Moya Brennan, Celtic Woman, Sarah McLachlan, Sarah Brightman and Loreena McKennitt.

But I still find this popularity surprising, because this is no popular, cosy, comfortable Christmas carol. Instead its images are harsh and bleak, and in the uncomfortable political climate in the world today tey are challenging and demanding once again.

‘In the bleak midwinter … snow had fallen, snow on snow’ … snow on Sidney Street, Cambridge, in front of the chapel of Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone:
snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter,
long ago.

Our God, heav’n cannot hold him,
nor earth sustain;
heav’n and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign:
in the bleak midwinter
a stable place sufficed
the Lord God almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for him, whom cherubim
worship night and day,
a breast full of milk
and a manger-ful of hay;
enough for him, whom angels
fall down before,
the ox and ass and camel
which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim
thronged the air;
but his mother only,
in her maiden bliss,
worshipped the beloved
with a kiss.

What can I give him,
poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man
I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him —
give my heart.

On the ‘Fitzwilliam Trail’ in Cambridge colleges and in Dublin’s squares

The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge ... founded thanks to the generosity of a benevolent Dublin landlord (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

A few weeks ago, I met an old school friend, Frank Domoney, at Pembroke College in Cambridge, and we had lunch at the Anchor at Silver Street Bridge, enjoying the riverside view and the manoeuvres of the punts on the River Cam.

Punts and Silver Street Bridge at the Anchor in Cambridge ... the beginning of an afternoon on the ‘FitzWilliam Trail’ Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

On the opposite side of the river stands Darwin College, once the home of Charles Darwin’s son, the astronomer and mathematician Sir George Darwin (1845-1912), who lived in the old mill by the Mill Pond.

Geoffrey Chaucer mentions the Mill Pond at the beginning of ‘The Reeve’s Tale’ in The Canterbury Tales, and this was once the only crossing over the River Cam for vehicles on this side of Cambridge.

Tracing the Fitzwilliam connections

Richard FitzWilliam (1745-1816), 7th Viscount FitzWilliam ... gave his name to museums and colleges, streets and squares, in Cambridge and Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

However, the main reason for my visit to Cambridge that sunny day though was to trace some places associated with the Fitzwilliam name. The Revd Dr Humphrey Fitzwilliam, a Fellow of Pembroke College, was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University when he died in 1503. But the Fitzwilliam name, now a commonplace throughout Cambridge, dates from the generosity of an Irish peer, landlord and antiquarian, Richard FitzWilliam (1745-1816), 7th Viscount FitzWilliam, who owned large estates in Dublin.

A quiet corner in Trumpington Street, opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The Fitzwilliam Museum was founded in Cambridge when he left his library, art collection and £100,000 to Cambridge University at his death in 1816. And the museum in turn has given its name to a restaurant, a street, a house, a pharmacy and a college.

‘The Search for Immortality’ – an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge – ends this month (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Richard FitzWilliam was born in 1745, and was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, receiving his MA in 1764. In 1776, Richard succeeded his father as 7th Viscount FitzWilliam, and along with the family title inherited his large estates in Dublin.

The Irish peerage titles of Viscount FitzWilliam, of Merrion in the County of Dublin, and Baron FitzWilliam, of Thorncastle in the County of Dublin, were created by Charles I in 1629 for his ancestor, Sir Thomas FitzWilliam (1581-1650). The FitzWilliam family is recorded in Dublin from as early as 1210, and by the time Thomas FitzWilliam was born, his family was one of the wealthiest and most powerful in the Pale. The family seat was at Merrion House, Co Dublin, and they also owned Merrion Castle and Baggotrath Castle, both of which have long since disappeared.

Baggotrath Castle stood on the present Baggot Street in Dublin, but was a casualty in the wars of the mid-17th century. The ruins were demolished in the mid-19th century, and the site is now occupied by 44-46 Upper Baggot Street, facing Waterloo Road.

Merrion Castle, which fell into disrepair around 1710, probably stood opposite Merrion Gates, on the site of Saint Mary’s Home and School for the Blind. The castle was replaced by Merrion House, where Richard FitzWilliam’s father died in 1776, but was demolished 200 years later in 1976.

Designing Georgian squares

The FitzWilliam and Merrion names remembered in Dublin and Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The FitzWilliam titles became extinct in 1833 with the death of the ninth viscount, Thomas FitzWilliam. But Richard FitzWilliam is still remembered in Cambridge for his generosity and in Dublin for his foresight in developing two of the city’s Georgian squares.

FitzWilliam lived mainly in Richmond, London, but he frequently visited his home at Merrion House near Dublin. Merrion Square was laid out by his father in 1762, and in 1791 Richard secured an Act of Parliament to enclose the centre of Merrion Square.

Fitzwilliam Square was designed by Patrick and John Roe in 1789 and was laid out in 1791-1792 as leases and plots were made available by the FitzWilliam estate. An Act to enclose the centre of Fitzwilliam Square was passed in 1813.

When Lord Fitzwilliam issued the leases for his square, he ensured that houses were built in a uniform manner, imposing strict conditions and controls, although the squares had a variety of builders and owners. The leases set the height and number of storeys, the type of windows and the front façade materials, and ensured that the exteriors presented a uniform typical Georgian elevation.

Another FitzWilliam family

The former Market House in Dwyer Square, Tinahely, Co Wicklow ... the FitzWilliam family of Coolattin House rebuilt the villages of Carnew and Tinahely (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Richard FitzWilliam’s family is often confused with the FitzWilliam family that came to Ireland with William FitzWilliam, who was appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland in 1571. His descendants came to own 91,800 acres in Ireland, with large estates in Co Wicklow, Co Wexford and Co Kildare, including Shillelagh, a town planned as part of the FitzWilliam estate in the 17th century, and Coolattin House, built as their country seat around 1800.

This second FitzWilliam family rebuilt the Co Wicklow villages of Carnew and Tinahely in the 19th century. Carnew Castle was re-roofed and modernised for the Revd Richard Ponsonby, later Bishop of Derry and brother-in-law of Earl FitzWilliam, when he became the Rector of Carnew in 1813.

A later rector, the Revd Henry Moore, built the high castle wall. But Moore strongly opposed FitzWilliam plans for an interdenominational school in Carnew. Moore took his case to court and won a ruling that allowed him to build a Protestant school on the only site available – the corner of the churchyard. A petulant FitzWilliam was swift to react – he evicted the Rector of Carnew from Carnew Castle.

When a coat-of-arms was designed for the future Fitzwilliam College in the 1880s, the two FitzWilliam families in Ireland were confused once again

Despite sharing the same name and similar titles, the two families were not related, and the FitzWilliams of Co Wicklow were descended from a family with origins in Northamptonshire. Yet, when a coat-of-arms was designed for the future Fitzwilliam College in the 1880s, the two families were confused once again.

A Cambridge bequest

Fitzbillies, the famous cake shop and bakery at 51-52 Trumpington Street, beloved of Cambridge undergraduates and best known for its Chelsea buns (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

When Richard FitzWilliam, Viscount Fitzwilliam, died in 1816, he left his large Irish estates to his first cousin’s son, the 11th Earl of Pembroke. But his large art collection and library went to the University of Cambridge, along with £100,000 to house them. His generosity led to the foundation of the Fitzwilliam Museum, built on lands acquired from Peterhouse and a good starting point for our ‘Fitzwilliam trail’ in Cambridge that afternoon.

Across the street is Fitzbillies, the famous cake shop and bakery in Trumpington Street that is best known for its Chelsea buns. The shop and restaurant ceased trading unexpectedly last year, but were saved this summer by a husband-and-wife team, Tim Hayward and Alison Wright.

Fitzwilliam House, Trumpington Street, was built in 1727 ... this house known as Fitzwilliam Hall from 1874 and then Fitzwilliam House from 1922, and is known once again as Fitzwilliam House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Also opposite the museum, Fitzwilliam House stands between the Peterhouse Master’s Lodge and Fitzwilliam Street. The house was built in 1727, and only became a lodging house for undergraduates in 1869. It later became Fitzwilliam Hall in 1874 and then Fitzwilliam House in 1922, taking its name from the museum. In 1960, Fitzwilliam House moved to new premises in Huntingdon Road, and became Fitzwilliam College in 1966.

The Fitzwilliam Pharmacy opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum, with the original Fitzwilliam House next door on Trumpington Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Nearby, the Fitzwilliam Pharmacy stands on the corner of Trumpington Street and Fitzwilliam Street. The sign over the door says “G. Peck & Son Dispensing Chemists Est. 1851,” but the listed Grade II* building is older, dating from the early 18th century, perhaps even before the young Richard FitzWilliam was an undergraduate at Cambridge.

Fitzwilliam Street ... a charming Cambridge sidestreet running from the Fitzwilliam Museum to Darwin College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Fitzwilliam Street runs from the Fitzwilliam Museum to Darwin College. The street marks the northern boundary of the mediaeval Priory of the Gilbertines or White Canons, established around 1307. Charles Darwin, a former student at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and the author of On the Origin of Species (1859), lived at No 22 Fitzwilliam Street in 1836-1837 after his return from the Beagle. Most of the houses on the street are now used for student accommodation.

Charles Darwin once lived at No 22 Fitzwilliam Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

We walked on through the streets of Cambridge, stopping briefly at Magdalene Bridge or “Mag’s Bridge,” to admire the punts again and to think of the new responsibilities facing Archbishop Rowan Williams at Magdalene College, before pressing on to Fitzwilliam College, our last stop on the Fitzwilliam Trail.

A brief stop at Magdalene Bridge while walking through Cambridge from the Fitzwilliam Museum to Fitzwilliam College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Fitzwilliam House moved in 1960 to this site on Huntingdon Road on land that once belonged to the Darwin family. It is a stark modern building that has been compared to an opulent Middle Eastern palace and described as “a snail’s-shell pattern” and “a riot of sculptural invention.”

Fitzwilliam College Library ... the college, with its stark modern buildings, has been described as “a riot of sculptural invention” (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

I caught a bus back into the centre to visit to the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies at Wesley House, and to visit Sidney Sussex College around the corner in Sidney Street. There was a little time to spend a book token that was a gift after preaching in the chapel in Sidney Sussex earlier this year, before catching the train to Stansted Airport for the last flight to Dublin.

Legacies in Dublin

Georgian Doors in Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Merrion Square remains the most extensive piece of Georgian architecture in Dublin. In 1930, the Pembroke Estate leased the square to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, which had plans to build a cathedral in the square. However, the plans never bore fruit; the square was transferred to the city and opened to the public in 1974.

The square’s most-visited monument is a statue of Oscar Wilde, who lived at No 1 from 1855 to 1876. Other resident of Merrion Square include Daniel O’Connell (No 58), Sheridan Le Fanu (No 70), WB Yeats (No 82) and AE (George William Russell, No 84).

Fitzwilliam Square is kept under lock and key ... could it be opened for its bicentenary next year? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Lord FitzWilliam retained the plots of No 4 and No 5 Fitzwilliam Square until his death in 1816. Past residents of the square include Henry Roe, the distiller who underwrote the restoration of Christ Church Cathedral (No 2), William Dargan, founder of the Irish Railways and the National Gallery (also No 2), the artist Jack B Yeats (No 18), Robert Lloyd Praeger, founder of An Taisce (No 19), Mainie Jellett, abstract artist (No 36), the Pym family, including Joshua Pym who twice won the men’s singles at Wimbledon, in 1893 and 1894 (No 50), and Lawrence Edward Knox, the founder of The Irish Times (No 53).

Fitzwilliam Square was the original home of the Fitzwilliam Lawn Tennis Club and the central garden became an international focus during the late 19th century, when the Lawn Tennis Championships of Ireland were first held on the open grass. The garden in the centre of the square has not changed since it was first laid out in 1813, and the pathways, the planted trees and the shrubberies remain intact as they were almost two centuries ago. The large grassed open area is still used for tennis in the summer, and the pathways, the planted trees and the shrubberies remain intact as they were almost two centuries ago.

A 150-year lease expired in 1963, ending a link with the square’s commissioners and the early days of the square. Eventually, the garden was leased to the Fitzwilliam Square Association for another 150 years. But the square remains closed to the public, the gates are padlocked and signs outside warn the curious that this is private property.

Merrion Square celebrated its 250th birthday this year. It seems an appropriate way celebrate the 200th anniversary of Fitzwilliam Square by opening it to the public.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay and the photographs were published in the November 2012 edition of the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel and Ossory)

This post was updated on 21 July 2013 with the photograph of Fitzwilliam House, Trumpington Street

Blackberries, brambles and memories for Michaelmas

Blackberries and brambles near the beach at Greystones, Co Wicklow, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

Today, 29 September, is Michaelmas, the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. Because this feast day falls near the equinox, it is associated with the beginning of autumn and the closing-in of the evenings. In many parishes it is associated too with Harvest Thanksgiving.

Michaelmas also marks the beginning of new seasons and terms in the law and in academic life, and Michaelmas term ends towards the end of December. There are still memories of this as one of the quarter days, when debts were settled and outstanding accounts were paid. The other traditional “quarter days” are Lady Day (25 March), Midsummer Day (24 June) and Christmas Day (25 December).

According to an old Irish superstition, blackberries should not be picked after Michaelmas. According to folklore, when the Archangel Michael expelled the Devil from Heaven on this day, he fell into a blackberry bush, cursed the brambles he had fallen into, and continues to spit on them after this day.

But there were few ripe blackberries among the brambles in Greystones, Co Wicklow, this afternoon – the lack of warm summer sunshine in the past few months means many of them are still red and waiting to ripen although autumn has arrived.

Cormorants on the rocks between the harbour and the beach in Greystones this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The temperature was hovering around a comfortable 16 all afternoon. As I walked above the cliffs, between the harbour and the beach, a group of cormorants sat along the craggy rocks, while out in the water there was a flurry of yachts and a lone ship waiting to move into Dublin Bay. The water and the sky were predominantly blue, and the views stretched back north as far as a sun-kissed Howth Head.

The Happy Pear ... a happy venue for lunch this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Greystones is spoiled for restaurants. And this afternoon I went for lunch in the Happy Pear on Church Road. The Happy Pear includes under one roof a natural food market with organic and non-organic sections, and a café and restaurant.

Later I went for a walk on the beach, and back up around the cliffs and rocks again. The sky and the waters remained blue, and I wondered what the full moon would be like in this sky and on these waters later tonight.

Sir Jacob Epstein’s bronze statues of Saint Michael and the Devil on the wall outside Coventry Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

On the way back to Knocklyon, through golden autumnal countryside, my mind wandered a little this Michaelmas as I thought of Jacob Epstein’s statue of Saint Michael at Coventry Cathedral, mused over a story about Saint Michael’s Church in Lichfield with Comberford connections, and recalled lazy afternoons in Michaelhouse in Cambridge.

When Basil Spence commissioned Jacob Epstein, some members of the rebuilding committee objected. They said some of his earlier works were controversial. And, although Coventry was at the centre of post-war reconciliation, some even objected, saying Epstein was a Jew.

To this, Spence retorted: “So was Jesus Christ.”

Saint Michael above the main door into Saint Michael’s Church in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michael’s Church, overlooking the cathedral city of Lichfield, is reputedly one of the oldest Christian sites in England. The churchyard has some amazing graves, including one known as the “saddle-back grave,” and another shaped almost like a funerary urn.

The ‘saddleback’ grave in Saint Michael’s Churchyard, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Kate Gomez, who writes a blog called Lichfield Lore [http://lichfieldlore.co.uk/], told the story two weeks ago of Saint Michael’s, its bells and its monuments. The parish launched a Bell Restoration Fund last month.

The Marquis of Donegall, whose family owned Comberford Hall after it had been sold to pay the debts and mortgages of the Comberford family, had erected a spacious mausoleum near the chancel in Saint Michael’s for his family, the Chichesters of Fisherwick Hall.

However, when Kate visited Saint Michael’s last month, she could find no trace at all of the ostentatious Chichesters. However, a booklet on the history of the church told how the mausoleum had become infested by rabbits and they were breeding in the coffins. The mausoleum was replaced by a stokehold during restoration work in 1842-1843, and the bones of Lord Donegall’s family were buried elsewhere.

Michaelhouse café and Saint Michael’s Church (on the left) on Trinity Street, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Another Saint Michael’s Church houses one of my favourite coffee shops in Cambridge. Michaelhouse is a café located in Saint Michael’s Church in Trinity Street in the oldest part of Cambridge, only a few steps from Sidney Sussex College, around the corner at the end of Green Street. It stands opposite Gonville and Caius College and is close to Great Saint Mary’s Church, Trinity College and King’s College Chapel.

Saint Michael’s is a 14th century parish and collegiate church. But, while Michaelhouse is an award-winning café and restaurant, the place remains a church – you could say it offers refreshment for both body and soul. Church services are still held in the chancel several days a week, and the mediaeval Hervey de Stanton Chapel offers a peaceful space that is also used at times for concerts.

Michaelhouse recalls the name of one of the earliest Cambridge colleges, which flourished from 13234until 1546, when it was merged with King’s Hall to form Trinity College. Michaelhouse was the second residential college in Cambridge, following Peterhouse (1284) – although King’s Hall was established in 1317, it did not acquire premises until it was re-founded by King Edward III in 1336.

At the time of the dissolution of the monastic houses, Michaelhouse had an income greater than that of Westminster Abbey. The clergy of Michaelhouse served Saint Michael’s Parish until the college was dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1546. It was merged with its neighbour, King’s Hall, to form Trinity College, which is the largest and wealthiest college in Cambridge to this day.

Nothing much remains of the original Michaelhouse buildings, apart from Saint Michael’s Church.

The interior of Saint Michael’s Church, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After a fire in 1849, the church was rebuilt by George Gilbert Scott and his son, George Gilbert Scott junior. In time, the parish was too small to be sustainable, and it was finally united with Great Saint Mary’s Church, the university Church, in 1908.

By the early 1990s, the church buildings were in need of significant repair, and an ambitious fundraising and building got under way. The Michaelhouse Centre opened in 2002, and is now a key cultural and spiritual location in the heart of Cambridge, a unique community resource and a place of beauty and tranquillity.

Driving back from Greystones, Co Wicklow, this afternoon through fields of autumn greens and golds (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The Collect of Saint Michael’s Day:

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted the ministries
of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
Grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

On the ‘FitzWilliam Trail’ in Cambridge

Punts and Silver Street Bridge at the Anchor in Cambridge ... with Queens’ College and the Mathematical Bridge in the background (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

After the closing Eucharist at the USPG Conference in High Leigh, Hoddesdon, on Wednesday [28 June 2012], I caught the train from Broxbourne through Bishop’s Stortford and Audley End at Saffron Walden to Cambridge.

On the platform at Bishop’s Stortford, as I was changing trains, there was an interesting map inviting you to walk along the banks of the River Stort through the Stort Valley Way from Bishop’s Stortford to Roydon or Hoddesdon.

In Cambridge, I met an old school friend, Frank Domoney, at Pembroke College, and we had lunch at the Anchor at Silver Street Bridge. Silver Street is particularly popular with tourists at this time of the year and a lively area as they look for punts on the River Cam.

We found a table at the Laundress Lane side of the Anchor on the edge of the river, overlooking the Mill Pond. I had a Vitality Salad (Beetroot, sweet potato, endamame beans, mixed grains, and Sussex cider rapeseed oil dressing £7.45) and a glass of Pinot Grigio.

The Anchor dates back to at least 1864, but it may be much older. It is a good place to relax in the sunshine, watching the punts go by.

On the opposite side of the river stands Darwin College, once the home the home of Charles Darwin’s son, the astronomer and mathematician Sir George Darwin (1845-1912). He lived there for most of his life in what was then the old mill by the Mill Pond.

In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer begins ‘The Reeve’s Tale’ with these lines:

At Trumpyngtoun, nat fer fro Cantebrigge,
Ther gooth a brook, and over that a brigge,
Upon the whiche brook ther stant a melle;
And this is verray sooth that I yow telle:
A millere was ther dwellynge many a day.

Silver Street Bridge was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1932, replacing an earlier cast-iron bridge. Before the Fen Causeway was built, this was the only route over the River Cam for vehicles on this side of Cambridge.

On the far side of the bridge, we could see Queens’ College, with Cripps Court to the left, and through the arches of the bridge we had a glimpse of the Mathematical Bridge.

As we walked along Laundress Lane, the Mill Pond the river was busy with tourists and punts. Punts were introduced to Cambridge as pleasure craft over a century ago, and one of the pioneers of punt hire on the River Cam was F. Scudamore, who founded his business at this point on the river in 1910. Today, Scudamore’s owns the largest fleet of punts, with almost 150 craft available for hire along two routes.

‘The Search for Immortality’ ... the current exhibition at Fitzwilliam Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

But the main purpose of my visit was to photograph some places associated with the Fitzwilliam name for an essay I want to write later this year. We started with:

● Fitzbillies in Trumpington Street, the famous Cambridge cake shop and bakery, best known for its Chelsea buns. The shop and restaurant were saved last summer by husband and wife Tim Hayward and Alison Wright after it unexpectedly ceased trading.
● The Fitzwilliam Museum, founded with a bequest from Richard FitzWilliam (1745-1816), 7th Viscount FitzWilliam, who had large estates in Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford, and built on lands acquired from Peterhouse.
● Fitzwilliam House, opposite the museum, between the Peterhouse Master’s Lodge and Fitzwilliam Street. This house was built in 1727, and became a lodging house for undergraduates in 1869. It later became Fitzwilliam Hall (1874) and then Fitzwilliam House (1922), taking its name from the museum. In 1960, the house moved to new premises in Huntingdon Road, and became Fitzwilliam College in 1966.
● The Fitzwilliam Pharmacy, next door, on the corner of Trumpington Street and Fitzwilliam Street. The sign over the door says “G. Peck & Son Dispensing Chemists Est. 1851,” but the listed Grade II* building is older, from the early 18th century.
● Fitzwilliam Street, which runs from the Fitzwilliam Museum to Darwin College. The street marks the northern boundary of the mediaeval Priory of the Gilbertine (or White Canons), established on the Trumpington Street site around 1307. Charles Darwin lived at No 22 in 1836 and 1837 after his return from the Beagle. Most of the houses on the street are now used for student accommodation.

A quiet corner in Trumpington Street, opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum

We then walked on through the streets of Cambridge, passing Peterhouse, Little Saint Mary’s Church, Pembroke College, Saint Botolph’s Church, Saint Catharine’s College, Corpus Christi College, with the Corpus Clock, Saint Bene’t’s Church and the Eagle, King’s College, Great Saint Mary’s, the Senate House, the Cambridge University Press Bookshop – the oldest bookshop in Britain, dating from 1581, Gonville and Gaius College, Michaelhouse, Trinity Lane and Trinity College, Saint John’s College, the Round Church and Saint Clement’s Church, shared by the Church of England and the Greek Orthodox Church.

Punts on the Granta at ‘Mag’s Bridge’, between Saint John’s College and Magdalene College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

At Magdalene Bridge or “Mag’s Bridge,” we stopped briefly to look again at the punts on the Granta between Saint John’s and Magdalene College. Then we pressed on up Magdalene Street, Castle Street and Huntingdon Road, by Saint Giles’, Kettle’s Yard, the Castle Mound, the Shire Hall, Blackfriars and Murray Edwards College, formerly New Hall, to Fitzwilliam College.

This was the last stop on the Fitzwilliam Trail.

In 1960, Fitzwilliam House moved here to a 3 ha site on land that once belonged to the Darwin family. It is a stark modern building that has been compared to an opulent Middle Eastern palace and described as “a snail’s-shell pattern” and “a riot of sculptural invention.”

I caught a bus back as far as Jesus College, and then walked west along Jesus Lane, by All Saints’ Church, Westcott House and Wesley House, which also houses the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, and around the corner into Sidney Street, for a brief visit to Sidney Sussex College.

There was some pleasant but short time left for shopping in Waterstone’s in Sidney Street, spending a book token that came as a gift after preaching in the chapel of Sidney Sussex last February. Then it was back by Christ’s College, Emmanuel College and Darwin College to the train station just in time to get to Stansted Airport for the last flight to Dublin.

Bicycles at the Porters’ Lodge in Sidney Sussex College ... one my last stops on my afternoon walk through the streets of Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Typographical errors corrected 5 October 2012.

Poems for Lent (9): ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge,’ by John Betjeman

A Sunday morning at King’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Second Sunday in Lent [4 March 2012]. My choice of a Poem for Lent this morning is ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge’ by John Betjeman.

I referred to this poem on Tuesday morning when I was discussing another poem by John Betjeman, ‘Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican.’

Some years ago, in a book review in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Timothy Mowl of the University of Bristol described ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge’ as of the “least important” of Betjeman’s poems, “because it is about a place, not people in a place.”

But Betjeman is at his best when he fuses together in one poem his different passions, and in ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge’ he presents a happy marriage of architectural detail, finely observed, and the sense of the worship of the eternal captured in a moment.

In ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge,’ Betjeman captures a sense of wonder in the celebration of Anglican worship as he presents the beauty and splendour of Anglican worship, ablaze with colour.

Taken together, ‘In Westminster Abbey’ and ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge’ give us a poet who believes deeply in Christ and who holds out hope for the Church of England and Anglicanism. One represents a place of public worship the closely links the Church with the political power in the nation; the other represents the very beauty of Anglican worship in a place associated not only with the academic, architectural and musical excellence of the nation.

‘In Westminster Abbey’ is one of Betjeman’s most savage satires. It is a dramatic monologue, set during the early days of World War II, in which a woman enters Westminster Abbey to pray for a moment before hurrying off to “a luncheon date.” She is not merely a chauvinist but also a racist, a snob and a hypocrite who is concerned more with how the war will affect her share portfolio than anything else. Her chauvinistic nationalism leads her speaker to pray to God “to bomb the Germans” … but “Don’t let anyone bomb me.” Her social and ethical lapses are a product of her spiritual state, which is a direct result of a nation’s spiritual sickness.

On the other hand, in ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge,’ the moment of worship exists out of time as the living and the dead, the choir and the poet, join in the eternal praise of God. In this poem, Betjeman captures a joyful and spontaneous reaction, albeit an emotionally restrained expression, and a sense of wonder in the celebration of Anglican worship.

Stanza 1 describes the procession of the choir of the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, and the spiritually overwhelming aesthetics of the chapel – the stalls, the stained glass, and especially the stunning fan-vaulted ceiling, “a shower that never falls.”

Stanza 2 sees the poet’s mind wander away from the service as he imagines being outside among the “windy Cambridge courts.” Again there is a great emphasis on the vast variety of colour, but all the colours are transformed into “waves of pearly light” reflected off the Cambridge stone. The image suggests that the divine is not to be found exclusively in the chapel but in the world, the space that contains both God’s works and humanity’s work.

Stanza 3 is a geographical and historical expansion of these images and ideas. Here, the white of the “windy Cambridge courts” contrasts with the “vaulted roof so white and light and strong.”

Betjeman imagines the tombs that fill churches throughout East Anglia, with the effigies of the deceased captured for eternity in postures of prayer:

... the clasped hands lying long
Recumbent on sepulchral slabs or effigied in brass.

The prayers of these dead are a “buttress” for the vaulted ceiling of the chapel at King’s, which, built near the end of the Gothic period, needs no architectural buttresses., Christianity exists not because of aesthetics but because of prayer, and the sanctuary is supported, not because of the marvels of 15th century engineering, but by a tradition of faith. In ‘Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge,’ the moment of worship exists out of time as the living and the dead, the choir and the poet, join in the eternal praise of God.

The poem has no irony, except perhaps in the last line:

To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass.

Here Betjeman illustrates the futility of our human desire to share in God’s timelessness. All of us are being confounded by our foolish need to control God and time. It is a thought to ponder this Second Sunday in Lent as we read in the Gospel reading in the lectionary: “If any of you want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel. will save it” (Mark 8: 34-35).

The Chapel of King’s College, Cambridgeand the Backs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Sunday Morning, King’s Cambridge, by John Betjeman

File into yellow candle light, fair choristers of King’s
Lost in the shadowy silence of canopied Renaissance stalls
In blazing glass above the dark glow skies and thrones and wings
Blue, ruby, gold and green between the whiteness of the walls
And with what rich precision the stonework soars and springs
To fountain out a spreading vault – a shower that never falls.

The white of windy Cambridge courts, the cobbles brown and dry,
The gold of plaster Gothic with ivy overgrown,
The apple-red, the silver fronts, the wide green flats and high,
The yellowing elm-trees circled out on islands of their own –
Oh, here behold all colours change that catch the flying sky
To waves of pearly light that heave along the shafted stone.

In far East Anglian churches, the clasped hands lying long
Recumbent on sepulchral slabs or effigied in brass
Buttress with prayer this vaulted roof so white and light and strong
And countless congregations as the generations pass
Join choir and great crowned organ case, in centuries of song
To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass.

Canon Patrick Comerford is lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Poems for Lent (1): ‘Ash Wednesday’, TS Eliot

Sunset at Skerries Harbour ... the venue for the Ash Wednesday retreat today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today is Ash Wednesday, and I am on a retreat once again this year in Skerries, where we are guests at Skerries Sailing Club, overlooking the two beaches of Skerries, the harbour and Red Island.

Once again, on Ash Wednesday, I find my thoughts turning TS Eliot’s ‘Ash Wednesday,’ which has been described as “the greatest achievement of Eliot’s poetry.”

This poem was published in its complete form 1930, three years after his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927 and it appears in his Selected Poems before his other first Christian works, the ‘Ariel Poems,’– ‘Journey of the Magi’ (1927), ‘A Song for Simeon’ (1928) ‘Animula’ (1929) ‘Marina’ (1930) and the much later ‘The Cultivation of Christmas Trees’ (1956).

Eliot was baptised by the Revd William Force Stead (1884-1967) in Holy Trinity Church, Finstock, a small and locked village church outside Witney, on 29 June 1927. Stead was a fellow American, a poet and the chaplain of Worcester College, Oxford. It was Stead who first encouraged Eliot to read the poems of George Herbert and John Donne and the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes. A day later, Stead brought Eliot for confirmation in his private chapel by the Bishop of Oxford, Thomas Banks Strong, a former Dean of Christ Church, Oxford.

‘Ash Wednesday’ is the first long poem written by TS Eliot after his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927, although the first four ‘Ariel Poems,’ which were written at the same time, were published earlier. The complete ‘Ash Wednesday’ was first published in April 1930 in a small book with a limited, edition of 600 signed copies, followed by two print runs of 2,000 each in Britain and the US. Three of the five sections of ‘Ash Wednesday’ had already been published earlier as separate poems between 1927 and 1929.

The title, of course, refers to ‘Ash Wednesday,’ the first of the forty days of Lent, and the poem deals with the struggle that ensues when one who has lacked faith in the past strives to move towards God.

‘Ash Wednesday’ is richly but ambiguously allusive and deals with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation. The poem is concerned with personal salvation in an age of uncertainty, where the weariness of giving up to a creed weighs heavily on the speaker:

(Why should the agéd eagle stretch its wings?)
“Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Eliot’s journey to Christianity was along a long and winding path. Yet this poem, which is not so much about God as a prayer to God, displays a great spiritual maturity in a relatively new convert.

What did Eliot’s conversion to Anglicanism mean socially in 1927? Virginia Woolf said of his conversion that “a corpse would seem to me to be more credible.” EM Forster claimed that Eliot had “no trace of trace of religious emotion. He has not got it; what he seeks is not revelation, but stability.” But what was the reaction of his other contemporaries, including Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein? Eliot’s conversion may have been shocking at the time, if not revolutionary. But their response, whatever it may have been, was not going to turn him: “No one ever attempted to convert me; and, looking back on my pre-Christian state of mind, I do not think that such a campaign would have prospered.”

‘Ash Wednesday’ constitutes the greatest leap in Eliot’s verse and life and the greatest pause in his poetic writings before the hiatus between his plays and The Four Quartets.

In ‘Ash Wednesday,’ Eliot’s poetic persona has somehow found the courage, through spiritual exhaustion, to seek faith. That faith demands complete submission, including the admission that faith must ultimately come from without because what is within has been exhausted. If ‘The Hollow Men’ (1925) admits powerlessness over damnation, ‘Ash Wednesday’ admits powerlessness as a prelude to, or a requirement for, salvation.

Yet if ‘Ash Wednesday’ is about penitence, it i also about repentance. The opening lines, taken from Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXIX, use the verb “turn” three times. “Turn” echoes the Greek word for repentance, μετάνοια (metanoia), literally “changing one’s mind” – as the prophets called on Israel to “turn back, turn from your wicked ways.”

‘Ash Wednesday’ forms a personal liturgy. It is a song of death and hoped-for rebirth, a song of hope while doubting hope, a song of faith while seeking faith, a song of love for one who has known little love, a prayer for mercy that acknowledges mercy as undeserved.

The stairs in the turret in Holy Cross Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Most readers are familiar with Eliot’s references to the stairs in ‘Ash Wednesday,’ which recall his life-long preoccupation with Dante, who, in Purgatorio, has seven ascending stairs that encircle Purgatory.

Eliot reworks the main images of ‘Ash Wednesday’ again and again throughout the poem, including: wings, the garden with its fountains and springs, the desert with its gourds and bones, the dominant, recurring archetype of the “Lady” or Mary/Beatrice figure, the stones she turns blue, the white light of transfiguration, the Word and the word, and the yew-tree.

Christ is never mentioned in the poem, while the devil is mentioned once, though limited to “the devil of the stairs” – some personal demon, not the fallen archangel of evil. And, while the poem may have the feeling of Lent, and the wilderness of the desert is prominent, Eliot makes no mention of ashes either.

Eliot’s portrait of the female redemptive figure in Part II and IV of ‘Ash Wednesday’ is the closest he comes to the admiration of, much less the love of, a real woman in his verse. However, the Lady is essentially unapproachable, and they never speak to each other unlike Dante and Beatrice. Professor Barry Spurr of the University of Sydney, in his new study of Eliot’s Anglo-Catholicism, ’Anglo-Catholic in Religion’ – TS Eliot and Christianity (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2010), says this is says ‘Ash Wednesday’ is “the finest Marian poem, in English, of the twentieth century.” But other critics say that in the poem’s conclusion the feminine archetype is identified with the Holy Spirit.

Part I of ‘Ash Wednesday,’ ‘Perch’io non Spero’ (Because I do not hope), was first published in the Spring 1928 issue of Commerce along with a French translation. It draws on a 14th century poem by Guido Cavalcanti, and a versicle prior to the Mass on Ash Wednesday: “Deus tu converses vivificabis nos” (“Lord, thou wilt turn again and quicken us”). It also draws on one of the traditional readings in The Book of Common Prayer for Ash Wednesday (Joel 2: 12-17), which urges a turning – and a re-turning – to God: “Turn ye even to me, saith the Lord, with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning …turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful” (Joel 2: 12, 13)..

Part I of ‘Ash Wednesday’ is composed of five stanzas with a couplet from the Anglican liturgy at the end. Each stanza calls for a different renunciation.

The first is renunciation of hope, hope in this world for past diversions that might threaten his new-found faith.

The eagle may be the eagle that represents Saint John the Divine in iconography – the Prologue of his Gospel later punctuates Part V.

Stanza 2 renounces the hope of fulfilment in this world, acknowledging that the “positive hour” of the “one veritable transitory power” is evanescent, thus the seemingly timeless moment of bliss or power in this existence is no longer a hope.

In Stanza 3, he rejoices in his own helplessness to change human condition, and so renounces the blessed face of this world and the voice of temptation within it.

If this sounds self-centred, then in Stanza 4 he defines what this entails: “And pray to God to have mercy upon us.” There is no going back.

Stanza 5 recalls the imagery of Stanza 1:

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air.

Then comes a direct appeal to God:

Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

The concluding couplet appended separately is taken directly from ‘Ave Maria’ in the Anglo-Catholic version of the Rosary, reminding us that now and the hour of our death are really the same, and the pilgrim again asks for mercy:

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

‘Salutation’ (Part II of ‘Ash Wednesday)’ was published in December 1927 in the Saturday Review of Literature, and again in January 1928 in Eliot’s own magazine, Criterion.

The three stanzas of Part II give a glimpse of paradise that the hollow men could never have achieved.

Stanza 1 begins with an appeal to the Lady, the Beatrice/Mary figure, and introduces three white leopards that have feasted on the pilgrim’s body and released his bones to sing. Eliot makes his leopards white, in contrast to the spotted leopard of Dante that represents fraud in The Inferno. Eliot’s leopards are divine agents to help in the purification of the pilgrim, friends of the Lady.

There are references too to Ezekiel’s vision:

... And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? ... (see Ezekiel 37: 3).

Of course they shall live, for this is a poem about faith. And the speaker credits the Lady’s goodness that his bones now “shine with brightness.”

Stanza 1 ends with an admonishment by God to prophesy to the wind (see Ezekiel 37: 4), a fitting task for a pilgrim too timid as yet to prophesy. Lastly the bones begin to sing, giving us the song to the Lady that makes up stanza two.

Stanza 3 echoes the first stanza, as the bones sing again:

We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other...
... We have our inheritance.

‘At the first turning of the second stair’ ... the stairs to my rooms in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge earlier this month (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

‘Som de l’escalina’ (Part III of ‘Ash Wednesday’) was published in the Autumn 1929 issue of Commerce, along with a French translation. In Part III, Eliot retreats from a vision of Paradise to one of Purgatory.

Stanza 1 begins with the pilgrim “At the first turning of the second stair.” He looks back and sees “the same shape”

Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

What or who is this same shape? Perhaps it is the shadow, the past or the unconverted nature of the poet.

In Stanza 2, the pilgrim climbs another half-flight, and there, poised at “the second turning of the second stair,” he leaves the devil and the shape “twisting, turning below,” then enters darkness. If the experience of the first stair re-enacts the struggle of renunciation, the second stair reminds us of old age and death.

The stairs leading to the gallery in Saint George’s Church, Balbriggan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

There are numerous groups of three that can be applied symbolically to these three stanzas about the stairs:

● The world, the flesh, and the devil.
● Dante’s spotted leopard (fraud and deceit), lion (violence), and she-wolf (lust and hunger).
● Past, present and future.
● Life, death and eternity.

We then have the “first turning of the third stair.”

The conclusion of Stanza 3 draws on the words the priest prays after breaking but before consuming the host at the Eucharist, which neatly transforms the temptations of the flesh into the ultimate Christian solution – the incarnation of Christ as remembered in the Eucharist:

Lord, I am not worthy,
Lord I am not worthy
But speak the word only..

Part IV provides another homage to the Mary/Beatrice figure. Is she the Virgin Mary? She certainly dresses “in white and blue, in Mary’s colour.” Or, does she represent the Church Triumphant? Or, are we being pointed towards the Holy Spirit?

In Stanzas 1 and 2, this is a figure of redemption beyond time:

In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked ...
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking ...
The Silent sister veiled in white and blue.

Stanza 3 recalls the temptation of Stanza 3 of Part III and dispenses with it.

The unicorns in Stanza 4 are a symbol of purity associated with virgins, but they need no jewels, for a hearse should be black, not gilded.

The white light which Eliot speaks of at the beginning of Stanza 4 is the dazzling light that forced Moses to veil face, the dazzling light at the Transfiguration, and Dante’s vision of Beatrice in the Paradisio:

I saw Beatrice turned round, facing left,
her eyes raised to the sun – no eagle ever
could stare so fixed and straight into such light!

But in this stanza in ‘Ash Wednesday,’ the poet manages to look at the Lady, glimpsing time redeemed in paradise.

Stanza 4 repeats a recurring theme, trying to restore “with a new verse the ancient rhyme.”

Stanza 4 to Stanza 8 of Part IV – the last two consisting of only one line each – reiterate the renewal brought by the Lady while introducing Part V:

Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word, unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile.

This last, one-line stanza is the middle line of the second, five-line part of the prayer Salve Regina (‘Hail Holy Queen’), customarily said by Anglo-Catholics at the end of the Rosary:

Turn then, most gracious Advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us,
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Amen.

Praying those words, “after this our exile” leads, therefore, leads to the promise of the Beatific Vision, of seeing Christ one-to-one.

In Part V, in the opening words, the poet contrasts the word and the Word, and this opening stanza draws on the prologue of the Gospel according to Saint John. Here Eliot is playing with language to confound reason, searching for the fulfilment of the promise in Part IV.

In Stanza 3, we find the Word is present in this world, however disguised and veiled, however ignored by the many, “those who walk in darkness.”

There are three single-line stanzas (2, 5 and 7):

O my people, what have I done unto thee.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
O my people.

Here Eliot is quoting Micah (6: 3) from one of the Good Friday reproaches or the Improperia, a series of antiphons and responses expressing the remonstrance of Christ with his people. At the 16th century Anglican Reformation, the Reproaches were not included in The Book of Common Prayer by Thomas Cranmer.

In Part VI, we move from Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, bringing Lent to its climax and its completion. Stanza 1 repeats the opening of ‘Ash Wednesday,’ changing only the word “Because” to “Although”:

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

This change reminds us of Eliot’s subtleties.

Stanza 2 briefly reworks themes from ‘The Waste Land’ and ‘The Hollow Men,’ recalling the death of Phlebas the Phoenician, “Wavering between the profit and the loss” (‘Ash Wednesday,’ Part VI, line 4; see ‘The Waste Land,’ Part IV, line 3).

A reference to the dream kingdom of ‘The Hollow Men’ follows in lines 5-6:

In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.

Compare this with ‘The Hollow Men’ Part II, lines 19-20:

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom.

After another equivocation – “(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things,” – Eliot moves on in Stanza 2 (lines 8-10) to empower the wings in Part 1 that were “merely vans to beat the air”:

From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

Stanza 4 cautions us again not to be distracted by this world or its poetry:

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

The yew-tree is a conventional symbol of death in English poetry.

After these lines, and without a stanza break, Eliot then continues in lines 25-26 with a supplication to the Lady, who is now revealed as a poetic incarnation of the Holy Spirit:

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

The repeated symbolism brings us to a climax. Among the rocks of this world which the Lady, in her world, has changed to blue as a symbol of redemption, the petitioner finally acknowledges that he is united with the Spirit through his repentance.

The poem ends with a prayer from the Psalms: “And let my cry come unto thee” (see Psalm 102: 1).

‘The place of solitude where three dreams cross / Between blue rocks …’ … blue waters and small boats in front of Skerries Sailing Club on Ash Wednesday last year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Ash Wednesday, TS Eliot

I

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain

Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jagged, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an aged shark.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Failure to listen to ‘Occupy’ protests ‘missed opportunity’ for Church

Today’s edition of the Church of Ireland Gazette (17 February 2012) publishes the following photograph and half-page news report on page 4:

Failure to listen to ‘Occupy’
protests ‘missed opportunity’ for
the Church – C. of I. theologian

Canon Patrick Comerford (left) is pictured with the Revd Dr Peter Waddell in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

The Church has missed “a blessèd opportunity” in mission through the failure of the community at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, to listen constructively to the “Occupy” protesters encamped outside the building, according to a Church of Ireland theologian.

Preaching recently at Choral Evensong in the Chapel of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Canon Patrick Comerford, who is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, said that when the Church “misses the opportunity to hear the ordinary concerns of people when they articulate them, [it] fails to grasp the intersection between temporal reality and eternal truth.”

Canon Comerford went on to say: “In missing the opportunity to listen to the ‘Occupy’ protesters in London, the community of St Paul’s Cathedral missed an opportunity, a moment in time that can never be presented in the same way again.”

He added: “In this failure, a blessèd opportunity to express the mission of a Cathedral – to allow the nation to speak to the Church and the Church to speak to the Nation – has been lost, never to be recovered in quite the same way again.”

The Pastoral Dean of Sidney Sussex College, the Revd Dr Peter Waddell, who is originally from Newcastle, Co Down, has been Chaplain of Sidney Sussex since 2005, Pastoral Dean since 2010, and is also the Director of Studies in Theology.