‘Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis…’

This atmospheric Christmas poem was written just over a century ago by Robert Bridges, in his first year as Poet Laureate:

Noel: Christmas Eve, 1913 — Robert Bridges.
Pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

A frosty Christmas Eve
   when the stars were shining
Fared I forth alone
   where westward falls the hill,
And from many a village
   in the water’d valley
Distant music reach’d me
   peals of bells a-ringing:
The constellated sounds
   ran sprinking on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above
   with stars was spangled o’er.

Then sped my thoughts to keep
   that first Christmas of all
When the shepherds watching
   by their folds ere the dawn
Heard music in the fields
   and marvelling could not tell
Whether it were angels
   or the bright stars singing.

Now blessed be the tow’rs
   that crown England so fair
That stand up strong in prayer
   unto God for our souls:
Blessed be their founders
   (said I) an’ our country folk
Who are ringing for Christ
   in the belfries to-night
With arms lifted to clutch
   the rattling ropes that race
Into the dark above
   and the mad romping din.

But to me heard afar
   it was starry music
Angels’ song, comforting
   as the comfort of Christ
When he spake tenderly
   to his sorrowful flock:
The old words came to me
   by the riches of time
Mellow’d and transfigured
   as I stood on the hill
Heark’ning in the aspect
   of th’ eternal silence.

Gerald Finzi used these very English words in his Christmas cantata In Terra Pax, though the third stanza is replaced by words from the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel:

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.  And the angel said unto them,

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.   For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2: 8–14 (KJV)

Finzi’s decision to quote Luke where he does leaves the identity of ‘the same country’ satisfyingly ambiguous.  For Bridges’ words are set unmistakeably in England — perhaps Oxfordshire, known to both Finzi and Bridges — and the words from Scripture seem to follow the poem seamlessly, as if it had been on the same hill that both poet and the shepherds had stood.  Thus the composer leaves undisturbed that unspoken myth, once wished-for and half-believed by everyone in England, and perpetuated by such carols as ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ or Warlock’s Bethlehem Down, that Christ must have been born somewhere in England, preferably in the Home Counties, perhaps enfolded by a chalky Sussex woodland or a wooded Surrey dene.  After all, where else could He have been born?

Ah, what shall we do with the incorrigible English?  Well, today’s not the day to worry about that.  Glory to God in the highest, peace to people of goodwill, and a merry Christmas to all readers.

Fame again for Shippea Hill

Last January I wrote (here) at about my proud membership of that select club of 22 people who, in 2014–15, had found (or concocted) a reason to alight at or depart from Shippea Hill station in Cambridgeshire.   So select was this club that, in the annual statistics of passenger usage at British railway stations that year, Shippea Hill had the distinction of coming last.

Now the station is in the news again:  according to this year’s statistics it has retained its position of honour, having attracted a grand total of twelve passengers.  It might seem natural to ask why so few people should use it, but, when it comes to Shippea Hill, as I explained last year, the question is really why the figure should be as high as it is!  For Shippea Hill is notable for having purported to serve, since 1845, a blank, unpopulated fen, the ‘hill’ of its name turning out to be a patch of ground qualifying as a hill only because it is not below sea level, and therefore attains a dizzying altitude compared to all the land around.  As for the trains, there is a single service per week-day, in one direction only, which calls on request only and is totally unsupplemented and uncomplemented by any bus or even a practical service at the next station down the line at Lakenheath.  There is no pub, shop or phone box; there is only the unchecked wind, the uncompromising Fenland horizon and the small bluish vessel of Ely Cathedral, eight miles away.

Happy birthday, Pope Francis!

Happy eightieth birthday to the unstoppable Pope Francis, who continues to teach and us less by words (which I think he sees as a secondary tool) than by gesture and example, in which his real homilies are to be found. 

“How many of you speak Spanish?” Pope Francis prays with refugees in Rome.

He is certainly a Pope who pulls no punches: man has, he says, “slapped nature in the face”; young people are to “renounce the sofa” — and remember the “Curse my mother; expect a punch” line?  People don’t realise how much tougher a nut he is than Benedict ever was!  But he has to be tough.  Time is short.  The world is awash with wrongdoing and riven by evil, and Francis has more to contend with even than the unfolding spiritual decline of the West.  As I have pointed out before, I think he wants to concentrate on the rest of the world before Europe, whose faithful remnant, with its particular mission, can still draw on the (far-from-exhausted) well of teaching of Benedict and St. John Paul, in addition to Francis’s, for years to come.

“Pray for me,” he has asked us, so we should do so.  And the same for his predecessor.

Advent: a month’s yearning

First the long slow drawing in of the evenings; now the long slow drawing near of God.  Advent is a very precious time of year, less severe than Lent (necessary though that severity is) and tinged with that yearning — known to us all since childhood but dulled and dormant in millions of modern hearts — for a mysterious approaching joy which, though still out of sight, will surely come to those who wait for it.  It is a distilled, wintry version, of course, of the feeling that is with us all year round, even if we choose to ignore it, that for all earth’s delights there is some greater joy somewhere else.  Advent is a model of a lifetime’s waiting that gives us a chance to see our life, and what lies at its end, as if from outside, and to renew our determination to do good.

If the people of Britain are ever again to return to the faith, perhaps it will be this feeling that draws them churchwards at last.  Under the old vaults they will find the joy they have sought, a newborn child in his mother’s arms.  He is only a few Sundays away.  Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.

A stirring arrangement of the old carol by Paul Leddington Wright, sung by the Choir of Derby Cathedral; from ‘Songs of Praise’ broadcast 29 November 2011, (B.B.C.)

Wishing a peaceful Advent to all readers, near and far.