Lines from a Not So Ancient Poet

Although public-school curricula has now, fortunately, expanded to include a wider variety of authors, my own generation (as well as that of my parents and grandparents) inevitably had to read a famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  Titled "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the poem told the story of a sailor who, because of his disregard for God's non-human creatures, was punished by having to carry around his neck the albatross that he killed.  As students, some of us felt that a heavy albatross was being hung around our own necks by our being required to read and maybe memorize part of the 15-page poem written in a now out-of-date style.  Despite the poem's strange plot, the poem did conclude with a sentence I thought was strikingly beautiful:

"He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all."

The phrase "All things both great and small" in that stanza was probably the inspiration for the line "All creatures great and small" in Cecil Frances Alexander's 1848 hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful." That hymn in turn inspired titles for the set of books by the 20th-century writer James Herriot.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I now wish I had been exposed to Coleridge's insights that ranged far beyond that poem.  In more recent years, as I have encountered small quotations from Coleridge's prose in other writers' books, I have come to recognize his philosophical contributions.  Although his personal life had many setbacks, Coleridge stayed on course with his interest in exploring human attentiveness, sensibilities, and imagination, and the role they play in our relationship to Nature. Such as his observation that "To think of a thing is [as] different from to perceive it as 'to walk' is from 'to feel the ground under you.' "

The significance of his philosophical work can be better understood against its historical background.  Coleridge lived from 1772 to 1834.  It was a time in which Western intellectual culture was struggling through transformations resulting from the expansion of modern science. Many scientists were saying that we can only truly know the world if we draw a sharp dividing line between human reason and emotions.  In contrast, Coleridge argued that "Deep thinking is attainable only by men of deep feeling."

northern royal albatross

Besides the metaphor of "an albatross around the neck," Coleridge has left our English discourse with other phrases.  It is also from his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" that we got "Water, water, everywhere... Nor any drop to drink."  (Sometimes rephrased to "... and not a drop to drink.")  And it is from his analyses of the craft of writing that we got our description of readers' "willing suspension of disbelief."  I think it would be nice if Coleridge's legacy to us would also include a kind of thinking that was a deeper feeling and a deeper loving. Not just for other humans, but for all creatures great and small.

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Do you think Coleridge was right in the idea expressed in the verse quoted from  "The Rime" that there is a link between praying and loving?

(The Coleridge quotes re. perceiving and re. deep thinking are from his Notebooks.

His phrase about suspension of disbelief is from his Biographia Literaria, Ch. 14.)

The Moon Over the Gate

Fluorescent lights.  Halogens.  Energy-efficient LED's.  Even incandescent bulbs.  When I go to the hardware store to purchase some light bulbs, I'm offered a mind-numbing selection.  What kind of coloration do I want?  If I can figure it out, I have myriad choices, ranging from icy white to imitations of sunlight to traditional warmth.

"The Harvest Moon"

Despite all that variety, there is one type of light that people in cities rarely experience today.  It is what a love song in the early 1900's called "the light of the silvery moon."  All the artificial lights of our cities, although making life safer in some ways, prevent us from enjoying full moonlight. That is unfortunate because moonlight is a form of illumination that people have considered to be a nearly transcendent experience.

I did once experience totally undiluted moonlight.  It was when my wife and I went to one of the star-gazing "parties" held at the isolated McDonald Observatory in remote west Texas.  Our ability to observe stars through the two small telescopes set up for the public was impeded by there being a brilliant full moon.  What interested me more than the stars was walking about outdoors using the illumination of nothing but the moonlight.  And how strange that light was!  I can only describe it by saying it was as white in coloration as a halogen, while at the same time being as soft as still air.

Given the uniqueness of that light, it is no wonder that writers down through history have seen moonlight as an aid to coming to a transcendent awareness.  Frequently, it is depicted as a transcendence that returns us to a state of feeling being loved in a way we forgot about.  For example, take this poem by the 8th-century Chinese Li Po:

"So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed --

Could there have been a frost already?

Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.

Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home."

The moonlight is so strange that Li Po does not recognize it at first, mistaking it for frost.  And yet, it brings him back to a place expressive of being loved -- "home."

Experiencing moonlight thus becomes a passage into a kind of transcendence.  Such movements into transcendence are sometimes expressed by poets' using some symbol for an opening. Thus, it might be a symbol such as a window, through which the moonlight enters, and through which the poet's heart can be transported out beyond its ordinary limits.

Another symbol for opening -- a gate -- is employed by the 8th-century Zen Buddhist writer Yung-Chia Ta-Shih. In his poem, he suggests that the greater consciousness the soft moon brings can not only make us feel more loved, but also make us be more loving.  Some key lines from his poem have been translated in this way:

"One moon is reflected in every expanse of water.

Every reflected moon is the one moon....

The great gate of love is wide open."

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Have you ever experienced how brilliant soft moonlight can be?  Where was that?

(The Li Po poem is from The Jade Mountain, by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-Hu, translators, © 1929.)

(The excerpt from the Yung-Chia poem is taken from Blue Mountain:
 A Spiritual Anthology Celebrating the Earth, ed. F. Lynne Bachleda, © 2000. p. 88.)