In a Season of Elegy and Hope

The Episcopal Church lost one of its great lights when Richard Wilbur died on October 14, aged 96.  Wilbur was one of the greatest American poets of the twentieth century, our nation’s second poet laureate, twice awarded with the Pulitzer Prize. At a time when his rivals often seemed to need vulgarity and extremism to attract public attention, Wilbur wrote beautiful and lyrical lines, often full of deep gratitude and profound hope. 

He was faithful member of his local Episcopal parish in the Boston suburbs, where a friend of mine was his rector for a time.  He kept a prayer book on his bedside table, and his confident faith colors the generosity and patience that mark his work.  Episcopalians may know him best for his striking Christmas hymn, A Stable Lamp is Lighted (#219).  Set to one of David Hurd’s arresting tunes, it weaves together the Nativity, the chaos and glory of Holy Week, and the hope of final restoration. 

I had another of his poems on my mind this week, In the Elegy Season, one of his first to receive wide acclaim. 

It’s about this time of year, and the way that nature settles herself down to face the inevitability of death as winter beckons.  The first stanza is sometimes quoted:

Haze, char, and the weather of All Souls’:
A giant absence mopes upon the trees:
Leaves cast in casual potpourris
Whisper their scents from pits and cellar-holes.

The narrator looks back on a bountiful summer not fully appreciated, and longs for the return of life in spring.  Wilbur, though, will not leave us with char and “a giant absence.”  But in the midst of this decaying landscape there are soft whispers of a promise yet to come:

Less proud than this, my body leans an ear
Past cold and colder weather after wings’
Soft commotion, the sudden race of springs,
The goddess’ tread heard on the dayward stair,

Longs for the brush of the freighted air, for smells
Of grass and cordial lilac, for the sight
Of green leaves building into the light
And azure water hoisting out of wells.

We have not seen so much of “the weather of All Souls” this October.  I picked a nice handful of raspberries from my bushes yesterday.  But the shortening days point to what will surely come. 

The church, in this case, takes its cues from nature.  November is the “Month of Holy Souls,” when we ask God’s mercy for those we have lost to death’s cold hand.  Our readings and liturgical prayers point us to the promise of everlasting life, that “azure water” that refreshes the sorrowful.  Advent soon will be here as well, with its summons to repent as we prepare to meet Him who is our Savior and our Judge. 

We will gather on All Souls’ Day to pray for the dead—those of our parish who have died in the past year and others for whom you wish us to pray.  In our Sunday adult forum, we will turn to the Book of Job, and ponder what this man, the Bible’s great sufferer, may have to teach us about sorrow, consolation and hope. 

These are not perhaps the cheeriest of topics.  But suffering and death are an integral part of that life given to us—marked by Adam’s curse yet made new by Christ’s glorious redemption.  In life’s apparent dead ends, in the situations for which we have no simple answers, we may yet testify to a hope that surpasses all we can imagine.  Wilbur could look on the barren tree and yet see “green leaves building up into the light.” Our assurance of God’s final and glorious work will help us also to trace His purpose in dark days.