John Donne (born 1572 – died 1631) was the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral London, from 1621 to 1631. As such he knew the Prayer Book collect for Advent I well. Holy Sonnet XV reflects his engagement with it, as well as the proper epistle and gospel readings for that Sunday.
The collect encapsulates the foci of Advent. This first season of the church’s year begins on the Sunday nearest November 30 and roughly coincides therefore with the month of December (up to December 25). The name is an Anglicization of the Latin word for ‘arrival’ or ‘coming’. The season, as also the collect, has in view two arrivals of Christ: first, when he ‘came to visit us in great humility’ and second ‘when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead’, which is the telos, the end or purpose of his first coming. It may surprise many, who think of Advent only as a preparation for Christmas or perhaps even an extended Christmastide, that an at least equal emphasis is placed on the end of all things, the second Advent, to that on the Nativity in this opening season of the church’s year. As T. S. Eliot said, ‘In my beginning is my end’.
Having gotten Advent well into focus, let us also briefly bring poetry into focus. What is poetry? How ought one to go about reading a poem? Is it just like reading any other sort of writing? Some will find these questions hopelessly elementary, but I find it useful to return from time to time to elementary questions and grapplewith answering them anew. Thomas Carlyle called poetry ‘musical thought’, which I think points in just the right direction. Poetry and music share a common origin – the mythic father of both is Orpheus, who through his song and playing on the lyre, was able to win entrance into hell to rescue his dead wife Eurydice. This myth is frequently used to sum up the power of both music and of poetry.
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