{"id":10,"date":"2007-03-30T23:29:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-30T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/?p=10"},"modified":"2007-10-24T23:32:17","modified_gmt":"2007-10-24T23:32:17","slug":"the-two-trees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/2007\/03\/30\/the-two-trees\/","title":{"rendered":"The Two Trees"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
\nThe holy tree is growing there;
\nFrom joy the holy branches start,
\nAnd all the trembling flowers they bear.
\nThe changing colours of its fruit
\nHave dowered the stars with merry light;
\nThe surety of its hidden root
\nHas planted quit in the night;
\nThe shaking of its leafy head
\nHas given the waves their melody,
\nAnd made my lips and music wed,
\nMurmuring a wizard song for thee.
\nThere the Loves a circle go,
\nThe flaming circle of our days,
\nGrying spiring to and fro
\nIn those great ignorant leafy ways;
\nRemembering all that shaken hair
\nAnd how the winged sandals dart,
\nThine eyes grow full of tender care:
\nBeloved, gaze in thine own heart.<\/p>\n

Gaze no more in the bitter glass
\nThe demons, with their subtle guile,
\nLift up before us when they pass,
\nOr only gaze a little while;
\nFor there a fatal image grows
\nThat the stormy night receives,
\nRoots half hidden under snows,
\nBroken boughs and blackened leaves.
\nFor all things turn to barrenness
\nIn the dim glass the demons hold,
\nThe glass of outer weariness,
\nMade when God slept in times of old.
\nThere, through the broken branches, go
\nThe ravens of unresting thought;
\nFlying, crying, to and fro,
\nCruel claw and hungry throat,
\nOr else they stand and sniff the wind,
\nAnd shake their ragged wings; alas!
\nthy tender eyes grow all unkind:
\nGaze no more in the bitter glass.<\/p>\n

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
\nThe holy tree is growing there;
\nFrom joy the holy branches start,
\nBeloved, gaze in thine own heart.<\/p>\n

-William Butler Yeats, 1892<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I became fascinated with this poem after hearing the Loreena McKennitt song adaptation of it.
\nI can just imagine a Christian looking right past the beauty of it and dismissing it as a shallow stack of look-inside-yourself-whitney-houston-hero-feel-good-humanism. Bah! Poetry that is just a little bit vague is always the best. It allows you to give it a very personal meaning. The original intention of the author is not important. I love the imagery of the tree of holiness planted inside us. Laughing and full of life. I relate well to the cynical lens of the despair demons (real or imagined?) hold. One makes my eyes bright and radiating kindness to my wife, kids, friends, and strangers. The other makes them downcast and hard.<\/p>\n

“Made when God slept in times of old”. I imagine the giant father time, who sleeps under the earth in C.S. Lewis’s Narnia. He is sleeping in the Silver Chair when they pass by his enormous body in the deep. In The Last Battle, his silhouette is seen from hundreds of miles away as he awakes and winds his horn at the passing of the world.<\/p>\n

There is more that I can say, but I’ll leave it at that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart, The holy tree is growing there; From joy the holy branches start, And all the trembling flowers they bear. The changing colours of its fruit Have dowered the stars with merry light; The surety of its hidden root Has planted quit in the night; The shaking of its leafy … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Two Trees”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/moscowcoffeereview.com\/carpecakem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}