Preview: Keble's Poem on Trinity Sunday

On June 1 Anna Mitchell and I started our series on John Keble's The Christian Year, commenting on how much Saint John Henry Newman appreciated Keble's humility, simplicity, and purity. Newman also remarked on how Keble's poetry elucidated "the Sacramental system; that is, the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types and the instruments of real things unseen" which I think we can see in this poem on the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. So on Monday, June 8, Anna or Matt and I will discuss this poem and how Keble deals with this great theological mystery on the Son Rise Morning Show near the end of the show's national broadcast.

As the Reverend William G. Most wrote:

Perhaps the deepest, the most profound of all mysteries is the mystery of the Trinity. The Church teaches us that although there is only one God, yet, somehow, there are three Persons in God. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, yet we do not speak of three Gods, but only one God. They have the same nature, substance, and being. 

Keble begins by praying to the Holy Trinity as he celebrates this Sunday after the seasons of Lent and Easter:

Creator, Saviour, strengthening Guide,
Now on Thy mercy’s ocean wide
Far out of sight we seem to glide.

Help us, each hour, with steadier eye
To search the deepening mystery,
The wonders of Thy sea and sky.

The blessèd Angels look and long
To praise Thee with a worthier song,
And yet our silence does Thee wrong.—

Along the Church’s central space
The sacred weeks, with unfelt pace,
Hath borne us on from grace to grace.

He turns from the mysteries of the Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost celebrated during those "sacred weeks" to the experience of Nature as an entrance to a hidden shrine: those mysteries lead to this one:

As travellers on some woodland height,
When wintry suns are gleaming bright,
Lose in arched glades their tangled sight;—

By glimpses such as dreamers love
Through her grey veil the leafless grove
Shows where the distant shadows rove;—

Such trembling joy the soul o’er-awes
As nearer to Thy shrine she draws:—
And now before the choir we pause.

The door is closed—but soft and deep
Around the awful arches sweep,
Such airs as soothe a hermit’s sleep.

From each carved nook and fretted bend
Cornice and gallery seem to send
Tones that with seraphs hymns might blend.

Keble suggests an analogy in the structure of the shrine:

Three solemn parts together twine
In harmony’s mysterious line;
Three solemn aisles approach the shrine:

Yet all are One—together all,
In thoughts that awe but not appall,
Teach the adoring heart to fall.

But there's a problem: some travellers don't even seek the shrine but are too busy to notice the "flowers . . . showers . . . bowers" that would guide them to the shrine:

Within these walls each fluttering guest
Is gently lured to one safe nest—
Without, ’tis moaning and unrest.

The busy world a thousand ways
Is hurrying by, nor ever stays
To catch a note of Thy dear praise.

Why tarries not her chariot wheel,
That o’er her with no vain appeal
One gust of heavenly song might steal?

Alas! for her Thy opening flowers
Unheeded breathe to summer showers,
Unheard the music of Thy bowers.

What echoes from the sacred dome
The selfish spirit may o’ercome
That will not hear of love or home!

Keble laments the sins and faults that keep us from loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

The heart that scorned a father’s care,
How can it rise in filial prayer?
How an all-seeing Guardian bear?

Or how shall envious brethren own
A Brother on the eternal throne,
Their Father’s joy, their hopes alone?

How shall Thy Spirit’s gracious wile
The sullen brow of gloom beguile,
That frowns on sweet Affection’s smile?

And the poem ends with prayer:

Eternal One, Almighty Trine!
(Since Thou art ours, and we are Thine,)
By all Thy love did once resign,

By all the grace Thy heavens still hide,
We pray Thee, keep us at Thy side,
Creator, Saviour, strengthening Guide!

As ever with poetry, it's important to read this out loud to hear the rhymes and rhythms, the alliteration and patterns of repetition, even the pauses designated by dashes and periods, etc. You might note a slight echo of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" ("Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near") in stanza 14: "Why tarries not her chariot wheel", and that there are 21 stanzas of rhymed triplets--you can do the math.