Why Was Poetry the First Thing To Go?

Poetry it seems was the first thing to go and therefore, essentially the first cognitive or thinking ART which began the decline we are currently in. We read for information and a knowledge of things, but not of relationships, of truth or of God and that knowledge. We read of history, but only lean toward the Psalms and Poetry when a greater depth is acknowledged and sought after. The visual Arts were kept and still are. We write now of circumstances we can keep as "fact", but miss truth if not involving the depth poetry can go to, and its invitation into something yet not understood or misunderstood. Yet the simplicity of poetry and its brevity can turn us back to truth, to depth, to relationships, to God and often, especially to the knowledge of the Holy One. The reader gleans from poetry and so does the listener. The Artist also gleans and is inspired by it. Poetry paints, and describes something that might be obvious, but obscured by fact. The ancient poets still speak today...if we'll listen. With all the challenges we face today I found two I want to present to you. James Russell Lowell wrote "The Present Crisis" before his death in 1891.

"When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast

Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb

To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of the century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantaneous throe,

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and fro;

At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start,

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart,

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the Future's heart

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill,

Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill,

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with God

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the sod,

Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler clod

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along,

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong;

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame;--

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide;

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the bloom or blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand and the sheep upon the right,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt stand,

Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against our land?

Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis Truth alone is strong,

And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng

Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all wrong

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments see,

That, like peaks of some sunk continent, just through Oblivion's sea;

Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry

Of those Crisis, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet earth's chaff must fly;

Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath passed by

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but record

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,--

Yet that scaffold sway the future, and behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is great,

Slow of faith how weak and arm may turn the iron helm of fate,

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din,

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave within,--

"They enslave their children's children who make compromise with sin."

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood,

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness,, who have drenched the earth with blood,

Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer day,

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey;--

Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children play?

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,

Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,

Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified,

And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied

Count me o'er the earth's chosen heroes,--they were souls that stood alone,

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone,

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine,

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I track,

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not back,

And these mounts of anguish number how each generation learned

One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts hath burned

Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to heaven upturned

For humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands,

On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands;

Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn,

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return

To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves

Of a legendry virtue carved upon our father's graves,

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a crime;--

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men behind their time?

Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Plymouth Rock sublime?

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts,

Unconvinced by ax or gibbet that all virtue was the Past's;

But we make their truth our falsehood thinking that hath made us free,

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove then across the sea

They have right who dare maintain them; we are traitors to our sires,

Smothering in their hold ashes Freedom's new-lit altar-fires;

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste to slay,

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps away

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of today?

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key."

Folks, It is STILL THE CROSS of Christ, the MORE of God which REQUIRES repentance to turn back, to amend with God, but also one another, and in order to sail INTO the MORE...to come closer...to God...AS GOD, not as man, especially wicked men describe Him. The wicked may present as behaving correctly, but deny the power and knowledge of GOD...AS GOD....and His Christ...the Only salvation of mankind. With that I give you Maltbie Davenport Babcock who penned "Be Strong" before his death in 1901.

"Be strong!

We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;

We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;

Shun not the struggle--face it; 'tis God's gift.

Be strong!

Say not, "The days are evil. Who's to blame?"

And fold the hands and acquiesce--oh shame!

Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name.

Be strong!

It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,

How hard the battle goes, the day how long;

Faint not--fight on! To-morrow comes the song."

The poems above are from an old book called "One Hundred And One Famous Poems" with Roy J Cook as Editor. I even love that because it does not glorify a person, but the depth of poetry historically and futuristically.

Books of poetry and testimony from Randy Goss can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Randy-Goss/e/B0888WH6C3/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk

Donations may be sent to P.O.Box 1823 Powder Springs, GA. 30127, or on paypal at passionscall@gmail.com.