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THE ORGAN-BLOWER
by Oliver Wendell Holmes

DEVOUTEST of My Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace devotion lends.

O brother with the supple spine,
How much we owe those bows of thine
Without thine arm to lend the breeze,
How vain the finger on the keys!
Though all unmatched the player's skill,
Those thousand throats were dumb and still:
Another's art may shape the tone,
The breath that fills it is thine own.

Six days the silent Memnon waits
Behind his temple's folded gates;
But when the seventh day's sunshine falls
Through rainbowed windows on the walls,
He breathes, he sings, he shouts, he fills
The quivering air with rapturous thrills;
The roof resounds, the pillars shake,
And all the slumbering echoes wake!

The Preacher from the Bible-text
With weary words my soul has vexed
(Some stranger, fumbling far astray
To find the lesson for the day);
He tells us truths too plainly true,
And reads the service all askew,--
Why, why the--mischief--can't he look
Beforehand in the service-book?

But thou, with decent mien and face,
Art always ready in thy place;
Thy strenuous blast, whate'er the tune,
As steady as the strong monsoon;
Thy only dread a leathery creak,
Or small residual extra squeak,
To send along the shadowy aisles
A sunlit wave of dimpled smiles.

Not all the preaching, O my friend,
Comes from the church's pulpit end!
Not all that bend the knee and bow
Yield service half so true as thou!
One simple task performed aright,
With slender skill, but all thy might,
Where honest labor does its best,
And leaves the player all the rest.

This many-diapasoned maze,
Through which the breath of being strays,
Whose music makes our earth divine,
Has work for mortal hands like mine.
My duty lies before me. Lo,
The lever there! Take hold and blow
And He whose hand is on the keys
Will play the tune as He shall please.

1812.

Labels: literature, organ

Today marks 101 years since the T. S. Eliot's conversion to Anglicanism.

Labels: literature, randomness

The BBC's weekly broadcast of Evensong (from Lincoln Cathedral this week) includes, among other things, the first broadcast of "The Windows" by Tarik O'Regan.

It's neat poem that uses stained glass as a metaphor for preaching.

"The Windows" by George Herbert.

Labels: Evensong, literature, music

Don't miss pages from Musurgia Universalis at Bibliodyssey.

Labels: literature, organ

The following includes information about a scriptural quotation in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

On the tomb of Kendra and Ariana Dumbledore is written Matthew 6:21. Here's a bit of context:

¹⁹Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

We in the liturgical churches read this on Ash Wednesday, but Harry Potter reads it on Christmas Eve.

An astute cultural/theological observation by Mrs. Rowling, I think.

Labels: literature

I have read it. You know of what I speak, surely.

Elsewhere, I'm guessing the Astros's second baseman has not.

Biggio has been plunked 4 times on release weekends of Harry Potter books (including both US and British releases of "Prisoner of Azkaban"), but he hasn't been plunked on the release weekend of any of the past 3 books. Biggio has never been plunked by a pitcher named Potter, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Weasley, Granger, Snape, or Hagrid.

Craig Biggio and the no-blood plunks at Plunk Biggio

Labels: literature, sports